From the Press Release Bin: Another WebOS

By Rod Edwards

The WebOS space has one more member: Synthasite, which joins Teqlo (my first post!), YouOS, Xcerion, Facebook, and others I’m sure. The “WebOS space” is loosely defined, but all members share the common goal of trying to create the development platform on which mashups and applications are built and distributed - a lucrative market — if it really exists.

I’ve argued elsewhere that trying to create development environments like this has relatively little marginal benefit: anyone with the skill and motivation to create a web application will do so in the tool of their choice. Windows thrived as a platform because it provided a set of API’s and a hardware abstraction layer that made developing apps easier; the web generally doesn’t suffer the same level of complexity until you’re into the realm enterprise-strength applications - which these WebOS players aren’t targeting anyway.

So - where they fit into the web ecosystem I have no idea. I admire all players for the technical challenge that they’ve taken on, but I’m not holding my breath for any to become a breakaway success - with the exception of Facebook who - interestingly enough - created the market for their platform before creating the platform itself.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2007 and is filed under News and Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Vinny Lingham

June 8, 2007 at 6:28 pm

Thanks for the mention. I’m glad that someone finally defined the space we’re operating in. It’s a bit ambitious for us in the Alpha release to target Facebook’s latest foray (API Platform), but in reality - we’re operating in the same space.

We’re actually less about sitebuilding and more about Mashup & Widget distribution to end users, which will enable them to publish to their websites. Web publishing is a fast growing market and end users (not developers) really want more control with less code handling - that’s our goal.

Our open developer initiatives will hopefully help foster a community that builds and shares widgets, mashups, templates & other web assets to create a powerful ecosystem.

This is where we believe there is true value and we openly admit that we don’t know exactly where this space is headed, but we believe we’re moving in the right direction and we will follow the market needs.

Regards

Vinny Lingham
CEO, Synthasite

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Vinny Lingham’s Blog » Blog Archive » links for 2007-06-09

June 9, 2007 at 1:19 pm

[...] From the Press Release Bin: Another WebOS « TechFold Synthasite is being compared to FaceBook Now that’s a first! We definitely see Synthasite as a Web Platform, not necessarily an OS - but the writer does see the vision. (tags: Synthasite) [...]

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