Building on top of popular B2C platforms is still risky

Build in top of B2C platform is still very risky.

December 7, 2024

Build apps on top of B2C platforms, such as Meta and Spotify, at your own risk. Here's why:

First, it was Spotify

10 days ago, Spotify revoked developer access to several of its recommendation features. Here are the Spotify features that devs will no longer have access to:

This is not a small change; I've seen strong & negative reactions from founders on platforms like X:

Spotify is cutting dev access to some of its core APIs.

This includes access to the "Audio Analysis" API which gave engineers access to a song's structure and musical content, fearing it could be used to train AI. Engineers aren't happy.

But I'd expect to see more of this type… pic.twitter.com/MGMLAkJBAN
— Rich Holmes (@richeholmes) December 3, 2024

Then Instagram did the same

A few days ago, Instagram locked out developers of third-party consumer apps.

Meta announced this change back in September, saying that "Starting on December 4th, 2024, Instagram Basic Display API will no longer be available".

What is Instagram's basic display API: "Instagram Basic Display API is used to connect Instagram accounts to third-party consumer apps (via sharing Profile, Images etc).".

To get this feature back, Instagram users need to switch to a business account.

B2B platforms are less unpredictable

Take Shopify as an example.

If you browse the IndieHackers' Products Database, you'll notice tens of profitable Shopify apps that have been around for years. Try finding this with apps build on top of Spotify or Instagram.

B2B platforms are also encouraging & inviting to 3rd party developers; Shopify frequently releases new features for its 3rd-party ecosystem of devs. They also reduced app store fees for new app store fees for developers on their first $1 million in revenue. Talk about being generous.

I'm still not sure why it's waaay riskier to build on top of B2C platforms. Maybe the incentives don't align:

In B2B, there are a lot of use-cases where it's a win-win situation for both the developers and the platform.
This is probably not the case for B2C, where the platform often loses by providing wide access to its API.

What do you think?

Darko is a journalist for Indie Hackers and an entrepreneur. He writes about AI and acquisition channels that work for founders. He runs a newsletter called Growth Trends where he curates news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

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