Interesting post by Marc Andreessen in his blog about Internet platforms or The three kinds of platforms you meet on the Internet.

Platform is an overloaded word nowadays. He gives this definition of platform first:

A “platform” is a system that can be programmed and therefore customized by outside developers — users — and in that way, adapted to countless needs and niches that the platform’s original developers could not have possibly contemplated, much less had time to accommodate.

Marc goes on and describes three different levels of Internet platform, in short:

• A Level 1 platform’s apps run elsewhere, and call into the platform via a web services API to draw on data and services — this is how Flickr does it.
• A Level 2 platform’s apps run elsewhere, but inject functionality into the platform via a plug-in API — this is how Facebook does it. Most likely, a Level 2 platform’s apps also call into the platform via a web services API to draw on data and services.
• A Level 3 platform’s apps run inside the platform itself — the platform provides the “runtime environment” within which the app’s code runs. Examples are Salesforce.com, Ning, Second Life.

The Level 3 platform is the interesting one by making a new range of applications and development possible.

Since I do not want to rewrite his text, read more from his post…