Apple's Jobs says 'onerous terms' kept Facebook ties out of Ping | Hacker News Reader

Apple's Jobs says 'onerous terms' kept Facebook ties out of Ping

appleinsider.com

26 pointsevo_923 comments

Coming up with a broad sample of "terms that would be considered onerous by one Steve Jobs" turns out to be a fun mental exercise.

Wild guess: facebook wanted Apple to have an open API to retrieve users' music listening preferences.

That seems unlikely if the breakdown in negotiations was as last-minute as others have speculated. Asking someone to implement an open API the night the product ships would be a bit extreme. It's possible that Apple had implemented such an API, but cancelled it at the last minute, but I don't think so. If Jobs didn't want an open API, he wouldn't agree to it in the first place.

With these two companies, it's hard to say who was in the wrong until we have details on what the sticking point was. It could be privacy, it could be advertising, it could be revenue-sharing, etc.

What percentage of those terms would be "terms offered by one Steve Jobs" to users?

The irony of Steve Jobs not liking onerous terms for getting app approval is almost too much.

Not really. Jobs didn't set up a lobbying effort to get Facebook to change its mind. He doesn't appear to have even blinked. Instead, he just implemented his own social network.

What's happened here appears entirely consistent with Apple's worldview. They own iTunes and their (huge) slice of the online music sales channel. They're going to do things their way. They'll suffer or succeed accordingly.

But you don't see him posting on HN crying about Facebook's closed garden.

^this (thread over, you won :P)

Apple seems to be one of the few companies facebook won't be able to push around so easily.

Facebook seems to be one of the few companies Apple won't be able to push around so easily.

I guess they deserve each other.

Last night's delay of iTunes 10 may well have been due to some last minute hardball negotiating by Apple to get their terms. Facebook must have drawn a line in the sand, forcing Apple to flip off the FB connect button.

Obvious question the author was somehow too lazy to research: what kind of terms could facebook ask for that Apple wouldn't agree to? Is anyone qualified enough to chime in?

this is the exact question all should be asking.. how do we know that apple was looking for terms that facebook wouldn't agree to. To me.. Apple already knows the terms prior to implementing FB connect. I find it unlikely that Facbook is changing their terms from company to company.

I suspect the fact that Ping seems to be engineered to be strictly top-down has more to do with it.

When I first launched Ping it asked me to connect via Facebook -- I did, and it worked perfectly.

I noticed that immediately after I had connected that the connect button and surrounding UI to that feature had become a search box.

The Ping community on Facebook is still up and running[1], so isn't this just a problem with Ping and its UI?

[1] http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=146879158663...

Unless I'm missing something, this title is misleading. The article itself doesn't say anything about Jobs making that statement, only the fact that Cult of Mac speculates that FB's terms became onerous.

The article links to the following article: http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100902/steve-jobs-on-why-facebo...

Here's the relevant quote from that article:

When I asked Jobs about that, he said Apple had indeed held talks with Facebook about a variety of unspecified partnerships related to Ping, but the discussions went nowhere.

The reason, according to Jobs: Facebook wanted "onerous terms that we could not agree to."

Thanks

In related news. Irony is apparently dead.

Whoa. What?

Apple agrees to onerous terms from the studios, who are about as decidedly on the extreme side of onerous as anything on the planet, and failed to negotiate with Facebook? Jobs probably yelled at Zuck and they got into a fight.

Apple needs the movie studios and music labels. They don't really need to make a deal with FB.

I would bet that no matter how onerous the terms Apple has with the studios, they're better terms than anyone else has.

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