Extendable software ecosystems
Posted on May 26, 2008 by Chris DeBrusk
One of the most interesting things I find about using Wordpress to host this blog is the absolutely amazing list of plug-ins that are available for it. There is other blogging software out there (I was a previous user of Typo) but even if it blow the doors off Wordpress (I haven’t found one yet) you almost have to use Wordpress simply because of the ecosystem of developers who support it. Otherwise you miss all the best stuff.
It is this ecosystem that got me thinking about what is required to write software these days. It used to be that if you built the best mousetrap you’d be pretty well off and the mice would flock to it (not to mention the cats). If the software was good, people would use it. Today once of the critical success criteria seems to be your ability to seed an ecosystem of plug-ins, templates and other functional enhancements written by people who are not you. Your software needs to be extensible, if not completely open source.
This is certainly the technique being used by Facebook and others who are trying to make their websites into the defacto operating system for the Internet. And of course you can contrast Firefox with its thousands of plug-ins against Internet Explorer with…somewhat fewer. I think the strategy is sound but the mechanism for ensuring that an ecosystem does blossom around your software is not so clear.
One thing is certain though, without it you aren’t going to be wildly successful. Extendable software is here to stay.
As an aside, there is a decent list of Wordpress plug-ins on the Daily Blog Tips blog. There were a few I hadn’t come across before and they look useful.
Sphere: Related Content» Filed Under Open Source
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