Why should a platform worry about monetization ? If the platform is standardized, open and decentralized, each participant will come with his own reasons for participating - some of them directly monetary, others indirectly monetary, others not monetary. Only anachronistic closed centralized and proprietary platforms worry about how they are going to survive - the users don't want the platform to wield power other them. Did anyone ever worry about what the monetization strategies for the SMTP, HTTP or TCP/IP platforms are ? Establish an open standard with a working implementation - if it adds value, the users will develop it and some of them will monetize it on their own terms as citizens of that platform. End-users and developers have a symbiotic relationship, but centralized proprietary platforms are merely parasitic. Openness and decentralization is in everyone else's best interests. - Jean-Marc Liotier from FriendFeed MT Plugin

@JulesLt : "platform" is quite a broad term, broad enough that everyone feels comfortable with it without the hassle of agreeing on a definition. As a lowest common denominator we can agree that a platform is a set of technologies that enables functionality. You will find definitions that consider such different things as marketplaces, chipsets, hardware standards, operating systems and API as platforms. So I defend the idea of protocols as platforms : they provide a technological foundation on which users can interact to add value. You are also confused about the definition of a user. A user is not necessarily a end-users. Take for example blogging : to the end user, the platform can be services such as Wordpress.com or Blogger. But these services themselves stand as users on platforms such as the TrackBack specification, RSS, a bunch of microformats and innumerable other protocols - and I'm not even starting with the software stack. To the user, open means retaining control and freedom. He may sacrifice - Jean-Marc Liotier from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Platforms are a tool for vendor lock-in, but might be useful for a publisher to more easily reach an established user base. The ultimate open platform is the Web itself. [<a href="http://bit.ly/2uWkx2">TrackBack</a>] - Jonas Bolinder from FriendFeed MT Plugin