Opening up your platform with Popfly
I’ve recently been playing about with and exploring Popfly. Basically it’s about enabling easy creation of web pages and mash-ups by simply assembling pre-created ‘blocks’ of functionality from a library by dragging and dropping the components on a canvas.
It strikes me that Popfly is another example of the benefits of opening up your platform in order that other people can include your functionality in their solutions. So, if your business is to sell products, creating a block that allows others to display your catalog in their solution ultimately should sell you more products.
Of course an extension to this is that a developer will come along with a great idea for adding value to your sites current capabilities and build it for you. As an aside I think that many of the Vista Gadgets that have been created demostrate this.
While there are a lot of blocks of functionality currently available in the library, I don't see many that deliver a direct commercial value. Now there's an opportunity...
Simon Thurman
