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Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

> You build anything meaningful on this and Facebook has you by the you-know-whats and can pull the rug out from under you at will.

Is that accurate? If I build a chat-based application, why can't I build out interfaces to various services? It may not be trivial, since some will offer features that others don't, but what's the principal problem preventing me from building a chat-based application that works over Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Kik, etc. so long as they each provide an API for connecting these bots, beyond time?

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You can but FB has the most MAU's. I believe after FB Skype is the biggest. Is it easy to build bots on multiple platforms?

Personally I'm staying away from Kik. Their MAU is low and I really dislike their constant spam.

I'm blanking on any names right now, but I've seen a few startups recently working on platforms for building bots with integrations to multiple different services. No doubt one or more of these will add Messenger support. There are also open source projects like Lita[0], BotBuilder[1], and Hubot[2] which give a nice abstraction layer.

[0] https://www.lita.io/

[1] https://dev.botframework.com/

[2] https://hubot.github.com/

If you have a way of siphoning users from FB to other platforms, then yes, you can win. Otherwise, when the gate shuts, your users are locked out.

Ok, I must be missing something. How is FB Messenger here anything other than a means of connecting to customers? If the concern is that FB will ape your app, then your app isn't sufficiently differentiated from their offerings.

I want to write a game server, say for Go (the game, not the language). I want to make one (or the sole) method of connecting to it FB Messenger (hypothetical, not actually doing this, and the real game server is just for my edification on learning Erlang). Yeah, this won't go very far. Once FB decides to pull a Yahoo! Games clone out they'll crush me unless I offer something sufficiently different to Go players, but outside a network of players, there's not much to offer that FB can't copy (and FB can, in fact, offer that network of players so I'm lost there too).

However, if I'm Papa Johns or Marcos Pizza or ..., FB can't shut me out. They're not going to get into the food production and delivery business. And if they did, those companies are hardly tied uniquely to FB's platform. They already have their websites, phone apps, phone numbers and other means of placing orders.

Google Reader was one of many means of connecting to RSS. It became the de facto means for a lot of people, and it was a serious blow to RSS when it shut down despite the existence of alternatives.

This strikes me as a non sequitur.

No one built a business dependent on RSS except for people in the business of building RSS aggregators. No content provider was effectively shut out of the marketplace (of content providing) by the death of Google Reader.

My point was that anyone building a business on top of Messenger that cannot stand alone is, probably, in trouble. But that's always been the case regardless of the base technology. What apps can be built on Messenger? Content delivery, potentially. Random data connectors like weather updates or where's-my-package. How can those apps stand alone against a behemoth like FB or Google or anyone else? They can't.

The point, then, is to build applications that make use of Messenger, but are not replicable by FB. Facebook isn't going to replace my FLGS. So how about I connect my inventory to an chat app so people can ask me if I have something they want? It cuts into my spur-of-the-moment sales when people come in, can't find Settlers of Catan, but see Dominion and buy it instead. But it also gives customers a better experience, and me a better understanding of what customers want (I got 20 queries for Catan this week, I should order a few copies).

Now, if I build a business which connects shop inventories to FB chat, I might be in trouble. FB can tear me apart in a heartbeat by building a small-business-inventory-chat-bot. And that's the way the world goes.

Don't build a company on Messenger that FB can replicate. Build connections to other businesses. FB won't be a bank. FB won't be a restaurant. FB won't be an Amazon. FB won't be a local small business. FB won't be a caterer. FB won't be a plumber.

EDIT: I'm tired, and this came out poorly formed. I may write another response later that's clearer once I've rested and reread this.

That's a reasonable point, but "sufficiently differentiated from their offerings" is pretty broad. Anything that's not a physical service could be considered insufficiently differentiated, not to mention that they could screw you much worse than simple imitation. Gussying up your idea and presenting it in a more integrated manner through internal APIs would be tame compared to the fact that they can actually revoke your API access. If they don't want to compete with you, they can completely shut you out, period.

Right. If I make a business connecting small business inventory lists to FB messenger so people can find out what's there to buy/steal (hey, you know someone will eventually think of this), FB will eventually offer this. Or Square (being in a better position right now to do so, FB isn't in the point-of-sale system yet). This pretty much means that if you build any middle-man business, you should expect it to fail in the long-run (at best, get acquired), unless you can develop a sufficiently large network to stand on your own (very hard at this stage, but not impossible).

Make the video games, ideally not casual or not simply implementations of existing, public domain, games like chess or something. Make the music. Make the movies. Make the articles. FB and others will connect you to customers because that's their value proposition to customers: connecting you to the things you want. They have no need to connect you to a middle man when they can be the middle man (why would they connect you to Steam or GoG, when they can replace those platforms in short order?).

Couldn't FB leverage their platform to strike better deals with, in the pizza example, Papa John's competitors? And then shut down Papa John's FB platform (or sunset some critical API functionality)? Facebook could also build their own 'pizza ordering' bot, and then force any pizza vendor to go through that bot (and pay), while simultaneously shutting down any other implementation of the same idea.

Imagine being Venmo and trying to implement Venmo over Messenger now that FB has Payments. Likely not going to happen, and the risk any business takes jumping into a closed platform is huge (especially with FB's history). Just like all of my favorite Spotify plugins that were shutdown and replaced with either no alternative or Spotify's chosen 'replacement'.

I want to write a reply to everyone, why does this have to be a tree and not a graph.

Facebook makes money off businesses using Facebook to connect to customers. They barely make money directly off customers.

It should be expected that FB will disrupt any digital service. Be that payment (peer-to-peer, customer-to-business), access to digital media (video, image, news, music). What they won't do is replace music studios. They won't replace movie studios. REPLACE is key. They may make entries into content production, by partnership or a standalone venture, but they will not cut out other content providers. FB's network is predicated on access. Cutting off customer access to things they want is a surefire way to lose those customers. Yes, FB can make the terms more onerous for businesses, particularly competitors. But they will suffer if they push it too far and end up backing off or flailing about wildly until they fail. Most likely, they'll back off.

Amazon with Amazon Prime Video has not cut out access to different movie and television studio content just because they make their own. Same with Netflix and Hulu. If they were to do so, the value they provide to consumers would go to near-zero. There'd be no reason to subscribe to their services if you only got their (limited) content. Who wants to spend $8/month for one channel's worth of content anymore when that gets you dozens of channels with a competitor?

Same thing with news, video games, and just about anything else.

If your product is really just acting as a middle man, expect a Google or FB or Amazon to step in and screw you. Yes.

So exist on the outside. Make the games, not the game room. Make the movie, not the theater. Make the music, not the stage. Make something that the middle-man's customers want, let the middle-man do his job of connecting you to those customers (well, contract with them).

> However, if I'm Papa Johns or Marcos Pizza or ..., FB can't shut me out.

That's not true. FB doesn't have to get into the food delivery business to shut someone out.

Imagine that FB's plans come true and talking with bots on Messenger becomes an incredibly popular way for people to order pizza. A lot of people can't imagine ordering a pizza any other way. Let's say you're Pappa John's and 60% of your business comes from Messenger. Now FB has incredible leverage over you, since they effectively control a huge chunk of your revenue stream. They could decide to kick you off unless you pay them a lead gen fee, since they're generating leads for your business. Or, they could start to offer "premium" service, where message response times are slowed down unless you're a paying premium customer. Or, heck, maybe a competitor would even pay FB in a strategic partnership to kick you off. The point is that FB is set up to have incredible leverage and government-like power, and it is a very safe bet that they will do everything they can to extract taxes from the businesses that depend on them.

The bottom line is that if people are using your app because it's on Messenger, and it's not that people are using Messenger because of your app, FB has much more leverage than you do, and you are entirely at their mercy. They are very likely to take advantage of that power dynamic in one way or another.

And that may be perfectly fine right now. But if they change their TOS tomorrow that says you're not allowed to do that and shut you down because of it you're good and fucked. They have all the users. They have the platform the users are on. Therefore they hold all the cards.

I'm ignorant, but how does this differ for something like the Play Store where Google can just not let you publish your app on a whim?

They're unlikely to do that. First, it's practically impossible to enforce a "don't use other messaging platforms" clause. I mean, they'll be pulling in a lot of companies early on that use SMS or similar to interface with customers already. Messenger is just going to be one part of those companies' communication arsenal. Second, if they did, you'd see lawsuits or major players leaving (for the same reason as #1, they're already on other platforms, they don't want to shut them down). A business needs to connect with as many customers as possible. If 80% of customers are on FB, and 70% are on Google, and 99.9% are on SMS, connecting to each of those platforms makes sense. But only one of them makes sense to use exclusively. Those are made up and wildly wrong numbers, but the real numbers will bear this concept out. FB won't have 100% of a business's chat-based customers, and unless they have > 90 or 95%, then exclusivity would be absurd.

As I said in my original comment, Twitter made a spectacular show of getting immense traction thanks to their universe of third party developers and then changing their TOS to effectively shut them down once they felt they didn't need them anymore. The situations aren't 100% the same (they never are), but my concerns aren't unfounded.

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