People use the word "platform" to describe products with fundamentally different characteristics. OSs (e.g. Android), infrastructure products (e.g Twilio), and platforms (Facebook APIs e.g. Connect) may all be called "platform". However, the distribution approaches and product strategy for each differs. Conflating what makes a platform work versus e.g. an infrastructure product can backfire and cause a team to have the wrong strategy for building a product or getting customers. These startups tend to fail.