自我维持的火焰

Certain products and services have the network effect — the property that the more people using them, the better they get for everyone. A related concept is that of a platform: where the more developers there are building things, the more users are attracted, which in turn attracts more developers, in a self-reinforcing spiral. Most of my experience is in the context of the web platform, but similar patterns occur for other developer platforms and even for some classes of user-focused products. Generally these spiralling dynamics are evidence of an underlying ecosystem.

某些产品和服务具有网络效应，即使用它们的人越多，它们对每个人来说就越好。一个相关的概念是平台的概念：有越多的开发者在建造东西，越多的用户被吸引，这反过来又吸引了更多的开发者，这是一个自我强化的螺旋。我的大部分经验是在网络平台的背景下，但类似的模式也发生在其他开发者平台，甚至是一些以用户为中心的产品类别。一般来说，这些螺旋式上升的动态是一个潜在的生态系统的证据。

A healthy ecosystem is a roaring bonfire. Once it gets going, it keeps growing on its own with self-sustaining momentum. That’s the wondrous property of a healthy ecosystem: it can produce benefits way greater than the investment put in by its creator.

一个健康的生态系统是一团熊熊燃烧的篝火。一旦它开始运转，它就会以自我维持的势头不断地自我增长。这就是一个健康的生态系统的奇妙特性：它所产生的效益远远大于其创造者所投入的投资。

By Chenspec (Own work) CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

作者：Chenspec（自己的作品）CC BY-SA 3.0, 通过维基共享资源发布

If you have an ecosystem underlying your product or service, getting that self-sustaining flame is likely your fundamental problem. Without that thriving ecosystem, your product is probably worthless.

如果你的产品或服务背后有一个生态系统，那么获得这种自我维持的火焰可能是你的根本问题。没有这个繁荣的生态系统，你的产品可能就没有价值。

Say you want to build one of these bonfires. You study the space you’ve chosen for the fire, plan for how big you want it to be, and place the perfectly sized logs in the perfectly balanced pile. In the real world these logs are things like the engineering resources to design and build the services, features, and infrastructure to support the ecosystem.

假设你想建造一个这样的篝火。你研究你为火堆选择的空间，计划你希望它有多大，并将完美尺寸的原木放在完美的平衡堆中。在现实世界中，这些木头是一些东西，比如设计和建造服务、功能和基础设施以支持生态系统的工程资源。

But now you need to get these logs started because they’re not just going to spontaneously combust. One way to do that ...