Integrating industrial chain is the key--some thoughts on open platform

Journalist/Chang

Open Platform, which has been stimulating the nerves of the domestic Internet community since 2007, has been a high-profile success for Facebook. Since 2008, Tianya, Sing, 51, Renren and other open their own APIs. It is noteworthy, however, that since entering the 2010, the open platform tide suddenly "accelerated": January, Taobao launched the application store Taobao box, May, the previous pledge 1 years not open happy net suddenly compromise; July, Sina launched a micro-Bo open platform; In September, Tencent launched a community open platform; Box Calculation "... Related to this, the long-term weak status of the developer community has suddenly become the sweet cakes, become the big ping Taiwanese hot-won object. Open platform, is definitely the 2010 Chinese Internet The most fire keyword. Why did the fire suddenly leap so fast?

The new heights of Internet competition

What is an open platform? According to Wikipedia's definition: "Open platform refers to the software industry and the network, the software system by exposing its application programming interface (API) or functions (function) to enable external programs to increase the functionality of the software system or use the software system resources, without the need to change the software system source code. ”

Non-tech readers may wonder why this seemingly obscure open platform, based on the open API, suddenly became the star of the financial media cover, the darling of the internet prospectors.

In fact, from the broader connotation of open platform, it is not unfamiliar to us, in our daily life everywhere. such as supermarkets, vegetable farms, they provide venues, properties for traders to sell, and even our computer can support a variety of applications of Windows, but also an open platform ... The so-called open platform is essentially a resource pool with a distribution channel. And one into the internet world, the physical form of resources into the "binary data", such as vegetable farmers, a series of specific business behavior is accordingly abstracted into an open API function.

In this way, the opportunity was born, for example, through a software application Mall API, developers can write an entry program, can not only import their own works into the mall sales, can also be the mall's sales of goods into their own applications, to help the goods to find more new buyers. According to statistics, Facebook has 5 billion times a day API application request, occupy its total traffic mass from this we can easily glimpse the entire open API system contains market prospects.

At the same time, and 2010 the same scenery of the key words: "Group purchase", "Geographical Application (LBS)" is very different, open platform is not a simple business model, but a resource allocation method, will affect the Internet industry pattern. And with the open platform of the scramble, it means that the entire industry has reached a "consensus": Now China's Internet competition has entered a new height-integration of resources as the core of the industrial chain competition.

Types of Open platforms

According to the Open content attribute, the author divides open platform into three kinds of forms:

Open Data: The main provider of platform data retrieval calls, as well as related marketing services. At present, the heat of the user relationship data, geographical location information data, product data and so on. This is the current domestic open platform mainstream.

Open Services: Open to a functional service, such as Amazon, which provides computing resources for cloud computing services. This kind of cloud computing services, the current domestic support by the Government, is in full swing of the early stage of construction, I believe that a few years will flourish.

Integrated System services: refers to through the open API to call the data and services extended to the physical world, currently mainly used in E-commerce enterprises. For example, in February 2011, Dangdang revealed that it will start the "Logistics open platform" for E-commerce enterprises to provide commodity storage, sorting, packaging and more than 1200 cities nationwide delivery of goods to the payment-delivery services. Although this model is in the ascendant, with the advent of the Internet of things, the integration of the digital world and the real world is more closely, will undoubtedly be the mainstream of the future open platform.

Economic principles of Open platform

From the angle of economics, where is the internal driving force of open platform? The answer is the long tail theory. Forbes published last year, "What spurred the API Gold rush?" said: "The trend of creating and applying APIs is driven by the long tail economy." The production tools themselves are basically free. Developers can develop applications for a variety of specific requirements. Even if every application is not very popular, it is huge when thousands of of applications are accumulated. ”

Ericsson researcher, co-founder of the Open Platform Laboratory, Liuzing an open platform economic model based on the long tail theory in its economic model of open platform (Figure 1).

Fig. 1 economic model of open platform

As can be seen from Figure 1, platform providers can create additional profits by meeting the long tail of user requirements and slowing cost growth (see http://oplatform.org/archives/73 for detailed argument). According to Qiping ("Internet Weekly editor") in his book "Long Tail strategy" defined, the long tail of the economy is "digital range economy", characterized by "initial fixed capital investment, low marginal investment, marginal income increment, marginal cost decline." At the same time, for third-party developers, his interests depend on the platform's user base and percentage. So once the platform can not take effective measures to attract developers, its costs will increase, resulting in a mutually-devastating result. Thus, a large enough user base, reasonable benefit distribution system and strict system guarantee will be the key to the healthy operation of the open platform ecosystem. As a platform provider, only with a truly open mind, to urge the whole industry chain to win to achieve long-term development space.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)