DISQUS

VentureBeat: Q&A: Verizon’s Higgins says it will be the first to offer `true’ mobile video

  • jhaynie · 3 months ago
    Why do all of these guys seem to want to control the value judgment on apps?

    His statement is a very revealing part of the ecosystem problem that is puzzling: "we don’t want people coming back and sending us the same app over and over. For us, it’s about quality apps".

    Who decides quality? If the app developer is building something they (and their intended audience) deem valuable, why would anyone else think that they can make a better value judgment?

    Don't we stifle innovation? If only a few set of apps will get accepted for a given category, do you never get innovation since subsequent apps can't be submitted? how fast do you get saturation?

    And what about the long tail of applications? Every day I find a ton of new websites on the web I never knew about. If network providers decided to limit the number of "quality political blogs" - which one's on the Internet would they choose?

    And what about competition? If they decide which apps make it, do they effectively stifle competition and create an unfair advantage on the one's that are deemed quality?

    If only 10 people "care about an app" - why do you really care? In a long tail business, which mobile apps and content should be, you should not care. Do you not understand that still?

    These are particularly challenging issues for carriers - mainly because their walled gardens are coming down and they just don't know how to think beyond lock-in and proprietary processes.

    Embrace open. Let users and developer's decide and let the ecosystem evolve independent of your desire to lock in and control it. That's how you'll be able to attract the most users and developers (and thus monetization opportunities) on to your platform.
  • anonymoosely · 3 months ago
    @jhaynie - amen. -- 'embrace open' still seems like a alien concept to VZ it seems.

    @ venturebeat... ask some incisive questions dammit - sponsorship money aside, this article reads like a PR release.
  • Graeme Thickins · 3 months ago
    I think the writer asked some very good questions. Hey, it's clearly disclosed as an interview with an advertising sponsor. That doesn't mean it cannot still be valuable information. It is. Thanks, VentureBeat, for publishing it.