Facebook Messaging: scorned by nerds, built for teens like candy-covered crack
brokenbottleboy.tumblr.com
brokenbottleboy.tumblr.com
(1) Hackers/nerds are early adopters. Thus, they will influence "normal" people to use products that they judge to be superior.
(2) Hackers/nerds are a tiny proportion of the population with no real influence. They might push esoteric but superior technologies, but large-scale adoption will ultimately be driven by how quickly cat pictures can be shared with the largest group of people.
The author of the article clearly believes in (2), but Apple seems to be making money off (1). So which is it? Or is this some sort of false dichotomy to begin with?
I'm constantly amazed when the "hacker" types lack the ability to see the bigger picture wrt (2) you described. At least on internet comments, so many lead a very self centered viewpoint. By sheer numbers, it's clear that "hacker" types don't provide the influence that directly leads to the critical large-scale adoption that is desired by so many.
I don't think it's necessary to choose between (1) and (2) at all. "Hacker"-types and early adopters are necessary for any product to gain any traction. They hold early influence (which obviously varies depending on the product) which diminishes as the product gains a higher adoption rate.
I guess then my question is whether "hackers" as an early-adopter group are worthwhile for targeting. Anyone have any anecdotes where a mainstream product started as a hacker niche?
Edit: My point being that advocating on behalf of mom and dad when it comes to technology shouldn't be frowned upon if it really does make their lives easier and better.
A lot of the 'lowest common denominator' people probably just see Facebook as a tool (or 'the internet'). They don't normally think about whether or not the hammer they are using is recording statistics on them from behind a two-way mirror, so why would they think the same thing of Facebook.
If a geek suggests that his parents should get an Apple computer because "It's 'just works' for my mom" it's not the same thing as Facebook because an Apple computer isn't monetized on the idea that Apple will coerce as much personal information out of your mom as is possible while trying to leave her as clueless as possible to the implications of doing so.
Personally I'd like it if my bank knows my name when they initiate a call to me.
You might like a bank that acts like this:
"Hello Customer with ID 31059283, your bank account balance is negative five dollars and is overdrawn. The last transaction was an eftpos transaction for $5 at a fast food restaurant. We are unable to tell you any other transactions prior to your account being overdrawn because as a matter of privacy policy we only store the last piece of transaction data. "
Well, I don't. Companies that don't know anything about me don't have my business, they just can't compete, like the Ford Model T.
> You don't want companies that you're a customer of
> to know your private information, that's fine, don't join them.
1) They joined to use Facebook as a social networking tool, and they are so used to a multitude of things on the internet being free, that they never bothered to question how Facebook is monetized. They personally don't derive any value from their personal, private information, so they don't have any inkling that Facebook could have any interest in that information.
2) They joined Facebook, and they know that Facebook has their private information, but they don't care. Their attitude is: "What's the worst that could happen?" They will only be convinced that something bad could come out of Facebook's data mining of their information when either: 1) something happens to them or 2) something happens to someone else and is high-profile enough for them to believe that it happen (while not being obscure or enough for them to think, "Well, they deserved it.)
3) They don't necessarily want to be on Facebook, but all (or most) of their friends are and they miss out on things like invitations to events, as well as 'inside' discussions if they aren't on Facebook. They attempt to try and limit the private information that they put onto Facebook, and to limit who can see the information they do put on Facebook, but sometimes they get lost in the maze of config options for privacy settings that are hidden here and there (scattered about, rather than gathered into one place).
"Facebook Messaging was built for Facebook fans. It wasn’t made for folk who are bothered about ‘privacy issues’ or the idea of oversharing"
How many hundred million users does Facebook have? It has them from all walks of life, with all sorts of opinions. Nerds and non-nerds.
From what I've seen, most people don't like Facebook. They use it because it's convenient and because other people do. They stay logged in because of the addictive nature of the status updates, so are more likely to respond quickly to messages, unlike with email.
A lot of people might use this new messaging system. It will be a bad thing if they do. Facebook has already proven numerous times that they can't be considered trusted custodians of peoples private data.
I also wouldn't like it if all my phone calls were routed through Facebook.
Yes.
When you are starting out, you need that first critical mass of people to get your service going. Those are the nerds looking for the next 'cool' thing.
Once you have a service going, you can ditch the nerds, they are a small segment of the population. Instead pander to the lowest common denominator. I don't see how Apple is making money off (1).
I'm a nerd and I haven't owned an Apple product recently (disclosure: I had a B&W G3 in the late 90s; it was sick, I mean, firewire and usb, man).
The iPod was not the first mp3 player. (In fact, it had worse specs and a higher price than its contemporaries back in the day...)
And with their computers, I mean, realistically, they are making money off of overpriced hardware running warmed-over BSD. Sure, its got a fancy skin, but the in terms of the substantive stuff, it is BSD.
Where they really make money is incredibly amazingly great marketing and an increasingly loyal user population. You could say that the loyal group of users is due to 'superior' something or other (tech ux, etc.).
This might be true, but i can't imagine them actually winning market capital with those. Where they really win are with the commercials that I can't friggin' get out of my head.
So sure, false dichotomy, and no one ever made money off of (1), (1) is kind of the price you pay to jumpstart your market.
This is just insulting flamebait.
I'm baffled by how this is flame baiting.
They have amazing marketing! They have great stores! It looks great!
On a technical level, I don't see how the OS and hardware are better than, for example, BSD or Linux on Intel hardware (same hardware)!
I honestly want to know what exactly is better from a geek perspective.
If you can tell me, I'll go out and buy one. I've looked at them and I haven't seen anything.
Frankly though, your argument is just wrong, on the merits. Most BSD distributions have nothing like the set of tools and APIs that Apple ships with OS X: they don’t have interface tools rivaling interface builder (at least that I’ve seen), they don’t have the APIs for sound and images, they don’t have the APIs for speech synthesis and speech recognition, they don’t have the APIs for integration with a built-in address book, they don’t have APIs for rich typographical support, or printing, or so easily connecting interfaces with a database backend, or doing 3d transformations to portions of an interface, etc. etc. etc.
Your basic claim is that there is no value added in all of the stuff described here, http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/navigation/#section=R... and that anyone who believes otherwise is just some kind of pawn of Apple’s marketing machine.
I mean, heck, it takes a 1000 page book just to describe the low-level parts of OS X: http://osxbook.com/book/toc/toc.html
The further implication is that things like well-supported hardware that comes in predictable configurations, very good technical support for developers who run into difficulty, a large ecosystem of high quality applications and discriminating users, etc. etc. are all unimportant compared to your personal opinion of whether something is sufficiently technically innovative.
To be honest there’s really not that much in any computer system, in terms of groundbreaking ideas, that wasn’t in Doug Englebart’s “mother of all demos”, or in the Smalltalk machines at PARC. So one could argue I guess that everything done since the 70s is uninteresting and derivative. But there’s a world of difference between the ideas and a solid production implementation.
> overpriced hardware running warmed-over BSD. Sure,
> its got a fancy skin, but the in terms of the substantive
> stuff, it is BSD.
Sure, it's got some BSD underneath, but in terms of the substantive stuff, it's the fantastic UI the users care about.
Of course as an fvwm2 user for half a decare plus, I hate Aqua, but at least I'm aware there's a point there to be missed.
At this point, my options are to redesign and reprogram the app to appeal more to teens, or release what I have now and go for people looking for utility, then after that work on a version for people looking for fun.
His 4 paragraph message boils down to: "It wasn't made for techies." The same message that has been said about the Ipad, Macbook Air, Kindle and countless others.
The question is how this changes the Facebook and whether it will benefit Facebook.
I pause for a moment.
I think it's equally lucid to think "but I don't want to step onto your lawn!" as it is to denigrate the "get off my lawn" mentality.
The privacy implications wavered by others, if not frivolously, then for other reasons, are still of concern to me. Regardless of whether or not I'm happy to waiver them myself.
2. Having some people online more chatting might make some other people actually want to be online less. I'm happy that no one ever pops a Facebook on me. For a number of friends, Facebook as close as I want or need to be much of the time.
I stated that FB has the Toys R Us business model: People are always producing kids; the internet always has new generations coming online. They are building for the COMING generations -- not the current.
Another here on HN summed it up best: FB's new messaging platform is for those who think FB IS the internet.
Additionally, this is further reason why I would not want/use a FB payment system. I dont want to have to be logged into FB / have an account on FB in order to pay something.
We have all seen how maverick Zuck is with others' privacy...
Disclaimer: I have never, nor shall I ever, had a FB account. I refuse to participate. While I see the value it provides others - I have been perfectly happy to not have had an account - and even gone as far as asking friends and girlfriends not to post pics or any other info about me to the site.
Personally, I can't stand Twitter, but I still have an account so I can poke about, see what's new (mostly because I have a professional interest in knowing what's going on in the world of UI development).
I like to think I know a fair bit about cars/motor racing, but I'm positive that the few times I've spoken to actual professionals I come off as a bit of a fanboy who only knows one side of it. I can know all the physiological effects of drug abuse, but I can't know what it is like to be a drug addict without being one... etc.
So, I follow everything that FB does - I just wont create an account.
I work in web development and have had to integrate those disgusting 'like' buttons and examine closely the API for other jobs. All this led me to decide that Facebook is not for me.
I'm intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From "hey nice to meet you" to "do you want to get coffee sometime" to "our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight." That's a really cool idea.
Cool, yes, but also a little spooky.
I don't want my child's privacy philosophy decided for her DEFACTO just because That's the way FB has always done it*
Her idea of privacy should be an informed discernment based on her world view, not simply "Well this is just how it is".
This is one of my absolute dislikes with both Facebook and Twitter - you pile all your data in there, they keep it all and own it all, and make it a royal pain for you to get at it again - even just for simple things like "I wonder when I was in XYZ?" or "What was that link that Matt posted last year?".
I haven’t seen a similar product for Facebook, but Tweet Nest (http://pongsocket.com/tweetnest/) is a step in the right direction for Twitter. It makes it easy to download browse, and search your tweets on your own server. Here’s an example (my own tweets): http://chasenlehara.com/tweets/ [Note: I have no affiliation with Tweet Nest, I just really like it!]
Nearly everyone makes the fundamental pagination mistake (Blogger being the sole exception), but calendar-based archives are a basic assumption that everybody implements. Facebook doesn't expose it in their interface but it's possible through the API. For Twitter it's completely fucked — the only people with access to your old tweets are the Library of Congress.
I imagine there are technical limitations leading to economic reasons for these kind of mistakes. So much data, sitting in so many massive silos, that they must design their systems on the basis of peoples' access patterns only hitting the most recent subset.
That, and the opposite economic reason - that you can charge for the older/richer/more complete dataset.
(EDIT: I know it's odd that I was whinging about the same thing a few posts up. I don't really know what the resolution is for that.)
I think the true reason is really just pervasive ignorance — everybody royally fucks this up and doesn't question it for a second.
If you have N items with M on each page, and the same request for 'page 2' always returns items N-M through N-2M, with the contents shuffling off the end as N increases, you're an abject failure. SELECT … LIMIT M OFFSET N-(P-1)•M is in almost every single web app and totally bullshit. It's incredibly depressing, but we'll probably be stuck with it for at least the rest of our lifetimes.
Maybe privacy is just a construct of modernized society?
But yeah, I wouldn't call it AMAZING.
That doesn't sound at all like a downside.
I honestly believe that a period of stagnant growth awaits facebook in the not too distant future when a new generation will be reluctant to join as it will be that 'uncool website their parents use...to spy on them'.
Thank you for showing me how to prevent my kid from joining: "Here I want you to make a facebook account so I can keep track of everything you do online and make sure you dont make any weird friends. I also want to check all your wall posts to see what you and your friends are saying. Here is your password."
What I'm saying is -- I don't think the internet itself is old enough that there enough precedent to predict how long a vastly influential internet company like Facebook might last.
It's not unusual for companies to be many decades old -- why does it seem assumed that an internet company that is fairly new today won't be around in 30 years?
Right now, facebook is the rage with kids. That is fine when they are in middleschool and highschool. Honestly, I cannot fathom dragging around every friend and acquaintance I've made with me through my entire life. There's a reason why you loose touch with most of your friends after highschool.
That is the problem with their new messaging platform -- they are trying to mold the way we interact so as to keep users in their walled garden.
This is a good, albeit spooky, move on their part. I wouldnt underestimate the strategery [sic] in this particular play -- especially given the assimilation of the recent goog defectors, including Maps and Wave creator....
This is not a short sighted effort on the part of FB. Sure, Zuck may have a lot of unlikeable qualities etc... but truly, he has done one thing better than any entrepreneur with the same level of skill; surround himself with really really (really rich) good advisors.
There was a lot of turnover in search before Google. There was a lot of turnover in social sites before Facebook. So Facebook sticking around would not be unprecedented. All the failed giants of the past eventually fail, except the last one.
On top of that, I think Facebook has innovated (ok, at least iterated) more frequently and intensely on their basic offering than nearly anybody. Compare with Google, where we went from search results with ads to search results plus 3 thumbnails with ads.
It's certainly within the realm of possibility, but it's not likely for a long while.
To both points: I respectfully disagree. We know very little about either, but FB has proven it cannot be trusted. Google has been pretty good so far, it's just a potential-looming-menace to Facebook's outright menace.
My favorite thing about this development is that now you don't have to. If you have a friend who only communicates through Facebook, or primarily through Facebook, now you get to use e-mail to talk to them, and they get to use Facebook to talk to you. Everyone's happy.
... Unless they harvest data from your messages that sit on the FB system in your friend's inbox, of course.