Web 2.0 Needs Adobe

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Not my words, but I agree with them. Tom Yager from Infoworld talks about how Adobe is well positioned to bridge “the desktop/mobile divide” and I like his take. But I think it’s a little bit more than that. Adobe and Microsoft are very similar companies (though Microsoft is just a smidge bigger than we are ;) . One of Microsoft’s strengths is that because they monetize their platform so well, they’ve done a great job of putting it everywhere. Think about the devices that run Windows Mobile, the Xbox, Windows itself and Internet Explorer. Platforms are good and platforms with multiple touch points are better. I think that’s a big reason why the web took off, it was basically a universal platform.

Adobe is, in some ways, Microsoft with a cross-platform bent. The Adobe platform is all over the place. Flash Player in the browser, Adobe AIR on the desktop, Flash on phones, and video game consoles; it’s big part of the web. Web 2.0 is all about content and getting it to your users. That’s the great thing about these open APIs and stuff like tagging – it makes it easy to create and consume content. Recently the content has gotten richer and Adobe has been there to help make that transition easy. Because Flash was everywhere it was easy to use Flash video – the ecosystem was in place to distribute rich media content.

As all of these “touch points” converge, developers are going to look for the lowest common denominator when trying to reach their users. Flash provides that. No, it isn’t open source, but we keep pushing what it can do. Silverlight has made us push even harder. We want to build an ecosystem that developers enjoy using. We’re still working to do that, but in the meantime we’re continuing to push forward and keep the platform as broad and as platform neutral as possible. I think the Web 2.0 crowd and web developers in general have a lot to gain from looking at Adobe. We want to help you reach more people with the kind of experience you want them to have.

[tags]Flash, Web 2.0, Adobe, Adobe Platform[/tags]

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  • http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog Scott Barnes

    Adobe and Microsoft are going in opposite directions :) We will pass each other at various intersection points which in turn may very well generate some interesting Web 2.0 or Web 3.x generation applications.

    Key is to have great ideas and fuse the technology together (at least thats what I hope).

    -
    Scott Barnes
    Developer Evangelist
    Microsoft.

  • http://www.valveblog.com Tuomas Artman

    Most of you guys (by that I mean Adobe) jump a little too quickly to the conclusion that the Flash Platform is everywhere. For the web its true. But hey, the desktop? AIR is still in alpha. Isn’t it a little too early to think (or even hope) that it will be as ubiquitous as the web player?

  • http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com Ryan Stewart

    Tomas, Adobe as a company is pretty good at distributing runtimes (Flash Player, Acrobat Reader) so while you’re right, it is kind of premature, we have a good track record.

    One thing we have going for us I think is that people are willing to download desktop applications, so the runtime may get penetration faster.