"it's getting harder and harder for new devs to get enough userbase that way."
The problem isn't that it's harder. Harder just means it takes longer. The problem is that most founders and investors are just copying the same strategies that worked ten years ago for Facebook and Twitter. So most funded startups are just shutting down after 12 - 18 months with the investors losing all their money.
> Hasn't this been true since startups existed? Most startups fail, everyone knows that.
I think what's new is the string of high-profile companies who have raised lots of money, released a product, and then shut down only a few months later. (Peach, Meerkat, Talkshow, etc.)
It's by James Whittaker. Basically people are downloading and using way less apps than a few years ago. Today to get the users to use something it has to be sortof built-in the ecosystem in an other way then simply forcing someone to go search for and download a specific app.
Similarly, Apple News is pretty crappy, but I still check it now and then because its right there. That's a "pageview" that used to go to a "media company".
I think he's referring to the platform itself providing most of the apps.
e.g. Google Play Music replaced spotify for me when I used android. It can now play podcasts (like Apple's podcasts app) and also recognize music playing (like Shazam). Google's Inbox replaced Dropbox's mailbox. Google Map has a lot of features I used to find in Waze, even some extra ones (like Timeline). etcetc
It reminds me of what Microsoft used to do: embrace, extend, extinguish.
"Embrace, extend, extinguish" was Microsoft's strategy for destroying open software interoperability standards. I understand what you're saying, but it's not nearly the same thing.
It might seem like that now, but in hindsight the opportunities will be obvious. There were multiple search engines when Google came out and many social networking sites when Facebook came out. There are always opportunities, things just get harder. A lot of businesses seemed indestructible have collapsed, every major car manufacturer and wall st bank would have failed if they hadn't been bailed out in 2008. The same thing can happen to tech companies.
In the SEO world you used to be able to put a keyword on a page 1000 times and then make the text white with CSS and rank #1 and make bank, now that gets you penalized. Spamming backlinks used to work, now it gets your site de-indexed.
You have to have an edge that separates you from the competition if you want to succeed
Now you need 100 WordPress blogs on individual ipv4 addrs on SWIP'd blocks hosting AI-generated content about a keyword (which search engines can't distinguish from legit content) and have those rank well enough to get real SERP CTR so you can sell your eBook about how to get rich from the Internet (which is itself just generated from a Markov chain PHP script running against Wikipedia articles).
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There is a huge saturation of apps on every major platform and it's getting harder and harder for new devs to get enough userbase that way.