The Secret to Success: Developers, Users, or Hype?

I think if you are early in the game then go for the users, you are new and different, they will like you (and don't have too many choices either), and if you like you can get the developers after, if you have users they'll be interested in you.

But if you are late in the game, then you probably need to go after the developers (much harder but if possible, you need to get creative like Google and their prize!), so you can offer new and more exciting products (features) than the competition, create a hype and that way get users to come to you.

The article says FB is an example of going after the developers. "Yes" and "No". "No" because, they were the first one to open up so that was exciting for the developers, but they also had millions of users at that point. After iLike got around 3 million users only in one week, I think everyone wanted to develop for FB now. But "Yes", because they were somewhat late in the game, specially compared to Myspace, so they had to open up and get the developers into it.

Google, is late in the game for phones so they are going for the developers.

But I think if you can get the developers in it, you win. It would be very hard for other companies to compete with you, you will always have a lot more exciting products ... and once network effects kick in, its almost impossible to compete. Maybe a lesson from Microsoft...