last 100 is pointing out a few issues with the Plazes/Nokia deal:
My question for Nokia is: What are you going to do with the opportunity you have?Nokia purchases Plazes, a location-based social networking service | last100Is Plazes going to be available only for Nokia owners and subscribers?
Or will Plazes, which is supposed to release a native iPhone client next month, going to be available for as many phones on as many carriers as possible?
Platform exclusivity works against the network effect, which defines social network and social media. No location-based social network will succeed among the masses if it is limited to friends who use a particular handset or platform.
Up until now Plazes was mostly a web/desktop client thing, but the open API should enable third-party clients on all kind of platforms. I sure hope - and it would be dumb to do anything else - that a Nokia-run Plazes will continue with this open API-path and even present at least an iPhone client on their own.