What makes an application platform a lasting success? Vint Cerf, the co-inventor of TCP/IP and Google Vice President, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, and Tim Sparapani, Facebook Director of Public Policy, talk about their experience building international, highly adopted platforms in a discussion moderated by John Markoff of the New York Times and the Berkeley School of Journalism.
Cerf talks about the beginnings and ongoing success of TCP/IP, which he says was always intended to be a platform that anyone with an idea could use. The openness of this platform was an essential part of its adoption, says Cerf, and this approach has been successful in a number of technologies that have followed, including the World Wide Web.
Twitter is more of a utility than an application, argues Dorsey. He says that the company listens to its users and provides convenient ways to use the technology for a variety of purposes. Both Dorsey and Sparapani discuss how other companies and developers have built applications on their companies’ platforms.
People have concerns about large platforms, which Markoff raises, asking the panel questions about corporate control and privacy. Sparapani talks about how Facebook allows people to control, with granularity, their privacy and how they communicate on the platform.
Markoff asks a number of questions on government involvement with web platforms: How should the U.S. government be using Facebook and Twitter? How can Facebook and Twitter be used for communication during a crisis? And, should the Internet be a public utility?
Vinton G. Cerf is Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. Cerf served as a Senior Vice President of MCI from 1994-2005, as VP of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives from 1986-1994, as VP MCI from 1982-1986, and as Principal Scientist, US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Information Processing Techniques Office from 1976-1982. Cerf was a member of the Stanford Faculty from 1972-1976.
Jack Dorsey is the creator, Chairman and co-founder of Twitter.
Tim Sparapani is the Director, Public Policy at Facebook. Tim is responsible for developing and implementing the company’s interaction with the federal, state and local governments and with opinion and policy makers. Tim’s specialty is privacy and constitutional law. Prior to joining Facebook, Tim was Senior Legislative Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, where he helped advance the constitutional principle of the right to privacy, representing the ACLU before Congress, the Executive Branch and before the media.
John Markoff joined The New York Times in March 1988 as a reporter for the business section. He writes for the science section from San Francisco. Prior to joining The Times, he worked for The San Francisco Examiner from 1985 to 1988.
Markoff has written about technology and science since 1977. He covered technology and the defense industry for The Pacific News Service in San Francisco from 1977 to 1981; he was a reporter at Infoworld from 1981 to 1983; he was the West Coast editor for Byte Magazine from 1984 to 1985 and wrote a column on personal computers for The San Jose Mercury from 1983 to 1985.
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