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by freshfunk 4804 days ago
Most of what was written here is true of all platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, iOS and Android.

- In the beginning, there are few rules and so it's the wild west. Developers see what they can get away with.

- As time goes on, platforms look at what uses of it pose a key threat to their core product (e.g. social graph, twitter client, payment platform, third-party engines, etc.) Those threats will be extinguished. Developers dependent on those key threats will be burned as they get shut down.

- Ad rates when the market is empty will always be cheaper than when the market becomes crowded.

- Competition makes it harder for smaller devs to survive. Remember the days when you could be an indie developer and have a chance at succeeding on iOS? Now all the big guys chart and the small guys don't make squat.

- The part about mobile is true but this is affecting ALL web platforms, not just FB.

Yes, Supercell got a huge investment but they are the exception, not the rule. They are the "Zynga of iOS" if you will (in the context of success/investment). The question is whether we'll see more of these kind of investments. Given that games is a hits-based business, I'm guessing it'll still be pretty rare.

1 comments

Some of that is only true with closed and proprietary platforms. The over-crowding issue is true on all platforms. Other that that though, these aren't really true with Android apps (as far as I know), or firefox plugins.