Jeremy Zawodny speaks on mashups, markets, and Web 2.0 by saying it’s all about the platform, and then asking what it means to be a platform in this day and age.
To answer his question, I take a platform to mean an application that allows different types of parties to transact their business. Why are platforms hot right now? Well, web companies are learning from the past, getting more efficient, and new technologies are emerging to get stuff done in quicker and easier ways.
What’s funny about Jeremy’s post are the comments, where people complain that the new businesses can’t stand on their own, and that Web 2.0 and platforms are just buzzwords.
While they are buzzwords, it doesn’t matter. They’re just ways to classify a new set of ideas or way of operating. Is Web 2.0 overdone? Of course. Is there too much hype? Yeah.
But, that doesn’t make it any less important, and it doesn’t mean that new marketplace platforms aren’t going to improve the way people do business and conduct their lives on the web. Isn’t that what’s important here?