Facebook Is Working on a Video Chat Device
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Whyever would I want or need a dedicated video chat device? Why would anyone?
Also, a laptop-sized (so, I guess, somewhere between 10” and 19”) isn't going to make people feel like they are in the same room.
I suppose if you wedded a 3D camera to a HoloLens-like AR system, with some clever software, that might make people feel like they are in the same room.
(I realize this is where people bring up 1984 which I think is just cynically off-topic.)
Sure, and the—unstated, admittedly—presumption was that FB was targeting consumer not enterprise use. I understand why enterprise videoconferencing systems exist.
> I'm okay with Facebook trying out a cheaper version for the average consumer.
I'm okay with them pursuing it. I'm just asking what the need is it serves.
Facebook views its mission as connecting people.
Other tech companies are heavily investing into hardware for the home including communications, along with various in-house services relating to AI, including Microsoft, Google, Sony, Amazon and Apple. That category will continue to rapidly expand, the products and services will get more and more powerful/capable. That hardware, such as the Echo, is a direct threat to Facebook's social monopoly, specifically because these devices will keep getting more powerful and keep reaching for nearby functions to assimilate. Those nearby functions will include numerous social & media aspects (two of Facebook's foundations now are images and video).
Why did Facebook aggressively target chat apps (WhatsApp, FB messenger) & photo apps (Instagram)? Because they were nearby functions to their core social product. It was very, very well understood that Instagram had the potential to expand into Facebook's territory, using images as the beachhead. Facebook is guaranteed to be concerned about the same concept at play with the devices being deployed into people's homes that are basically AI footholds. Today? No, today does not matter in that sense; this is all about the next 5, 10, 20 years and what these in-home devices will be capable of and what people will use them for.
No, Facebooks mission is to collect demographic data in as much detail as possible and to use that to sell ads.
Connecting people is a sideshow to all of this.
I never said it was their business model. You're confusing two separate aspects of what they do. They're directly related, they're not the same thing.
Facebook's mission is to connect people. That's what enables their business model. The former came before the latter, by necessity. They had a lot of connected users before they had a business model. But hey, try building a $500 billion social network business, before you start connecting up the users, see how it works out.
Guess what, I did. We reached about a million monthly active users at some point which was quite the high point, but still that's a drop in the bucket compared to where the web is today. Still, back then 100K active users per day put us well in the top 500 of all websites.
Needless to say I fell a bit short of the mark of making a $500B company but we really were trying to connect people and video chat was exactly the medium that we used. And no, we did not build up user profiles to track their behavior, not because we could not but because we felt that was not right.
So instead, we charged for the service and eventually it went under.
Personally I will not use any of these services unless I pay for them and my data is not retained or mined. Zuckerberg is the last person on the planet I would trust with my data.
That's also why I use plain old SMS rather than whatsapp and email or IRC rather than Gmail or Google hangouts or similar.
(Disclosure: My project)
So Facebook can see what's in your house and on your body and deliver those relevant, targeted ads you so dearly crave.
There can be good utility for ads without being dystopian. Like furniture sets you want buy to preview in your new empty apartment - not items you are totally uninterested in buying. I'm sure there will be countless ideas to get ads on AR pretty soon that will be unaggressive and jive well psychologically
In other words, you use your phone's camera to do whatever, and the phone notices you linger at a window or a billboard (by tracking your eye movements and retinal responses.) You get home, and suggested items are virtually added to your living room.
Maybe you walk past a clothing store and it adds a new suit to your reflection.
Or AR games that require you to move past physical ads or storefronts, and take pictures of them.
"This guy has a vacuum cleaner. Let's recommend him more vacuum cleaners to buy!"
Even though every single one of the platforms claim to be using cutting edge tech for targeted ads but all of them suck. I don't see them improving even if you give them a guided tour of your home including closets
More info - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14755498
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/ocean-plastic-pat...
OH wait in that instance because Siri's AI is horrid.
Or are you just kicking at Siri, which isn't relevant here?
Using Apple devices for video call seems to be extremely popular.
Siri is no good compared to the competition and I use to use her daily from 2011 to 2016.
It is 2017 and I don't know of any video conference system or software that "just works" everywhere, all the time, under all bandwidth conditions. If Facebook thinks they can pull this off by tight control on hardware, they will sell like hotcakes.
It probably wouldn't be anymore reliable than all the other conference software but at least it doesn't drag a mountain of bullshit and lockin with it.
We just use email and in person meetings though, I still don't quite get the point behind video conferencing.
It's strange, but you sometimes miss the "mundane" parts of life. Especially if you are on assignment for several months, there might not be much to say day after day, but just having some company is a nice feeling.
I can also see how it would be helpful for remote teams. If these devices were just on all the time and team members could peer into what others were doing or listen in on spontaneous jokes.
Of course I know there are ways to do this now with existing solutions, but it's more of a hassle to get it setup and also to automatically reconnect if there are network problems.
We had this arrangement once. A cube of four of us, had a big always-on tele-screen dialled into our remote team (four guys in another city). Fun at first but then we had to mute it (the background noise in both directions was very distracting, annoying to other employees). So we ended up in a farcical scenario of having it always on but relying on waving at the camera to get someone's attention, or IMing them, to unmute :)
First both need an Amazon account which, okay that's not so bad. But now both Amazon accounts need to log into the Amazon Alexa mobile app which my grandparents can not do as they do not have a mobile phone with apps on it so, instead, I have to use their login on my phone. Then I had to register their cell phone with their account on my mobile phone because they can't do the text message verification via their landline that they've had for 30 years and to top it all off now their Echo has all of the contacts from my phone because it doesn't let you manually manage contacts per Amazon account, no they have to be copied directly from your phone.
So if they can make it so all they need is a Facebook account and now they can video chat with us or any of their friends and family? That would be perfect for my grandparents.
With the Echo Show they simply say "Call BinaryIdiot" and it works. That's it.
So yes the setup was awful but we wanted a way for them, who are not tech savvy in the least, to be able to quickly and easily video call us whenever they wanted.
It's not trivial to setup, but it's not the worst thing either. It worked really well afterward.
Also there are WebRTC based sites that don't require logins
appear.in
rabb.it
Everyone is hooked on the big names and their requirements, when alternatives exist.
You can also make up random links and jump straight into a room, like: https://meet.jit.si/CleverPhrase
You can already do that, though. Facebook has built-in videochat on all platforms. I'm not clear how this device is substantially better than videochatting on your laptop.
That's because you're knowledgable about technology. My grandparents are incredibly smart people but doing anything on the laptop, mobile devices; pretty much they always find a way to go down the wrong path. Always.
But a device like Echo Show (once it's setup) or a dedicate Facebook chat device? That's push button, done. Easy. No update process to deal with, no random dialogs, no spammy bloatware from terrible software vendors to confuse, etc.
For those still in society but do not have the firmest grasp of technology do still want to participate where they can. Sometimes it's not made easy enough to do, in my opinion and experience and one of the best reasons for a dedicated device such as this.
I suppose I wish them luck, in any case, if it can make a few people's lives better.
Of note was also privy to early testing of Three (UK 3G mobile network) tests for video and whilst managed to stream the Matrix in the early days as a test, that never took of either and that was more due to the costs of data connections, an issue very much moot these days (least in the UK).
One area that often lets down videoconferencing at the consumer level are the camera's and the environment the user uses them in and gets down to lighting. But again, no killer, easy to use consumer solution has come and taken the market by storm.
Sure many point to point video solutions on offer and used but no universal standard multipoint as easy as sending an email to multiple people is jumping out.
With that, I wish Facebook good luck and they do have the user base to drive this, but I'm not sure it is a feature as high in demand for consumer users as many wish or feel it is.
I can only put this down again to the environments such consumer systems (your mobile say) are used in and whilst the processing power is there to alleviate much of this, that has still to come to fruition as a user friendly reliable experience.
One aspect of VC was you could tell if a network link (leased lines) was not upto scratch as you would see bit error, unlike network data, which would happily gloss over such odd bit errors. Other fun and games was ISDN circuits being stolen due to engineers repatching lines of little used circuits and then when the ISDN would lock up and that would often be that the bit error count hit a limit. You would call up, get the telco to test the line/circuit and low and behold it would be working again, this was due to the test resetting the error count. Had a neat way of testing lines using my 2G mobile on the Orange network, in that if I called an ISDN line the way it terminated the call would indicate if it was up or was errored, or busy.
But my funniest story would be spending 30 minutes trying to resolve an issue with a PicturTel setup with some French chap and why the audio from his end was not working, turned out he was sat upon the microphone.
I have a feeling that WebRTC portals are going to be the main way SIP calls are made as time goes forward, so somebody has to do it, I'd be glad to devote my life to it if I could make a salary and do it as open source.
I think SIP could be great, if some focus were put on interoperability and service providers. We really need something you could rightly call the GMail of SIP to show the world that open standard n-to-n video conferencing can be done well.
The issue going forward is the lack of standardization across protocols. Despite Apple's mention in the keynote when FaceTime was announced that it would be open, FaceTime is iOS/Mac only for now. And, I don't see Facebook's playing nice with Amazon's, etc.
I've driven next to people on the highway who were on a Facetime call with their phone resting on the dash in front of the speedometer, so that is a thing that people do, unfortunately.
If you already have a apple device you are already registered and anyone else on your contacts list that also have a apple device is also ready to receive your call.
They were planning to do so, but got caught up in a lawsuit with VirnetX.
These days however it is all data.
My theory about why people would rather just text than voice/video chat is that it consumes to much effort and commitment of time. People want to be able to quickly switch contexts and apps. If you're talking or video chatting then you have to be more focused and your phone is occupied during that process.
Also I think there's just an abundance of ways to communicate with anyone around the world now that video chat is not as special as it once seemed. I tried counting how many ways I could be contacts and my list was long.
Cameras in phones by Nokia et al. from 2005 are with this in mind, front facing, VGA video that is handled at the phone level as a video call:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N70
There is no 'app' that puts the video in a http stream somehow, this was baked in functionality, now abandoned by telcos.
Yet there is the selfie phenomenon, again something that few imagined to be the thing it is. Cameras used to point outwards, now they point at the owner. I would not be surprised if cheap phones only come with selfie cameras soon, much like how laptops only come with 'selfie cameras'.
A large tablet for just doing Facebook and Facebook video does not sound portable enough for what it does, 'phablets' are better on the commute, why carry another device? Sounds to me as if Facebook are trying to hard on all the failed VR apps.
My parents are luddites, so I still ring their landline.
It would be very interesting to see how this device competes. The features i would love to have is a 360 Camera attached to a large screen. with Multiple Mics / Good Speakers. Ability to seamlessly which to multiple screens based on where I am.
So can The Others.
My twitter feed is full of people pointing out their CEO (Zuckerberg) tapes over his webcams, but now wants users to put this in their homes.
I can use my phone for video chat over Facetime. Or Facebook Messenger. Or Skype. Or Whatsapp. Or Google Hangouts (haven't installed Duo. yet)
Signal and Line can both do audio calls but not video. Yet.
I think with the union of all those networks I should be able to do a video chat with 95% of my contacts.
When's SIP taking over the world again?
If there ever was progress that should move humanity backwards this is how it looks.
Disrupt is a strange way of putting it when they are an incumbent copying and implementing exactly what others have been doing for a long time. To me disruption means a significant change from how things are currently done in a given market -- a change that also changes the paradigm for how things are done in the market.