Skip to content

2 years ago

Published June 1, 2018 by Philip Elmer-DeWitt

The difference between a platform and an aggregator (video)

In 20 minutes, Stratechery‘s Ben Thompson explicates—once and for all—two of the most powerful ideas in technology.

From Code Conference 2018:

My take: Thompson at his geeky best. Catch the video before it’s disappeared.

Related

2 Comments

Joseph Bland said:
Google is more than an aggregator, because Android is a platform. Amazon is more than a platform, as is Microsoft, as is Apple. Facebook, af the present time, is still strictly an aggregator, but for how much longer?
That said, it’s important to differentiate between aggregator and platform. Good talk.
1
June 1, 2018
Log in to Reply
David Emery said:
Well, if nothing else, reading his slides and examples about the ‘average user’ shows how un-average I am. (For example, I have zero Google applications on my phone, I don’t do ANYTHING with Facebook from my phone, have all FB apps and games permanently disabled, run several different ad-blockers on my web browser, and have no other social media accounts. I use DuckDuckGo for search.)
But that’s not to say his model is wrong. It’ll be interesting to see how the big players adapt in the next 5-10 years.
2
June 1, 2018
Log in to Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.