Facebook to Introduce Three Tier App System | Hacker News Reader

Facebook to Introduce Three Tier App System

techcrunch.com

The TFA:

"Facebook desperately wants to find a way to help application developers make money beyond advertising, and the iPhone App Store has shown that people are willing to pay for quality applications."

Praise be to the iPhone AppStore! No one had thought of charging for applications before. Who knew that people would pay for software?

I still don't think it's likely that people are willing to pay for Facebook applications. Facebook is too limited. It doesn't give you mobile opportunities, not like the iPhone does. It really doesn't give you anything new that you can't find on other sites. Facebook is grasping at straws.

People are already willing to pay facebook to give a "panties" icon to another member of facebook--I don't think it is nearly the stretch you are claiming it is that they might also be willing to pay for apps.

Good point. :) The statement makes sense to me, though. The iPhone store shows that a market exists for apps for a specific, popular, walled-off platform with a unified storefront. Other mobile platforms don't have anything like that, do they (Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian)? As for desktop platforms: Windows users either pirate their software, or have their employers buy it for them (for the humor-impaired, that's an exaggeration and a joke). Mac users pay for their software, but are a fairly small demographic. Linux users use free software almost exclusively.

So having just one shop is supposed to be better than the option for multiple shops?

I still don't understand why??? I can understand if users want a shop they can trust, which Apple could deliver with their iTunes shop. But how would it hurt users if there were also other shops? The paranoid ones simply would not use those other shops.

Because it enables quality control and simplicity. It means that people looking for an app only have to look in one place, and after that their job is done. Enabling multiple sites means removing possibilities for quality control and making the download process something less than a "click once" process.

Why - the quality obsessed could just stick to the Apple shop, the existence of other shops doesn't prevent that?

No, no. Apple INSISTS on quality products. They don't care if YOU would compromise. They won't let you.

I'm guessing you don't use a Mac, or keep close with Mac users. The attitude is entirely one-sided: it's all about quality, period. Many Mac users eschew Firefox for Safari, because the one is so much better-made, even if it doesn't let you use StumbleUpon and whatnot. Word 2008 is attacked by Mac users for feeling too much like Windows. Even the App Store is being attacked right now for being too LOW-standards.

Apple's idea is this: if your idea is too poor to be displayed on their store, you should design for something that isn't working with Apple software. That's not a disadvantage. It's a mindset that ensures top-notch design, time and time again. It's why most people will pick up an Apple product and assume that it works well. It's because Apple controls everything, and because that's a good thing.

By that logic, Apple should lock OS X and make it impossible to install anything that doesn't go through Apple. I'd like to see how that would go down.

Also, I thought Apple promised to let basically every application into the store?

Without that, it would be mad to develop for the iPhone. It would be a huge gamble, spending maybe 5 digit sums or more only to hear that you did not live up to Apple's standards and can throw your application into the garbage bin.

Maybe there is another reason: maybe sales of mobile applications are a huge market, and Apple simply doesn't want to share.

Who in the hell cares what Facebook does anymore? Are we going to see a repeat of the last year, where every monkey in a marketing department wants to jump on the Facebook App bandwagon again? Sorry, but we've had a year of biting vampires, useless applications, and too much hype.

How much investor money has to be poured down a hole before people will start building businesses that have actual value?

I personally couldn't care less about Facebook/Myspace/<insert name of social network> anymore. I doubt I'm alone.

Imagine the endgame, where web apps handle all user accounts, collaboration features, sharing, and permissions through Facebook. It's not this year or next year, but Facebook could become the equivalent of what Microsoft Windows is on the desktop (although much less valuable, since the Web is a more anarchic environment than the desktop).

I think this blog post should be titled differently. While it has interesting info, it barely mentions any details about the tier system that's advertised in the title.

The case for a Facebook app store based on the iPhone analogy is severely flawed. Nobody would pay for a Facebook application.

1) iPhone users pay a small fortune to buy and use their devices. This selects for people with relatively high disposable income. Facebook profiles are free.

2) The iPhone is a platform in a way that is analogous with a computer. Facebook isn't. (e.g. there is a Facebook application for the iPhone. There is no iPhone application for Facebook).

a somewhat late response to all the application-tire/dread, perhaps?

Facebook innovates quickly, polishes late. Look at how they handled the Newsfeed. It's the same thing here. Though judging from the current redesign, it would seem they're running out of ideas.

This could be great if implemented well- kill off the Vampires and Werewolves insanity and promote legitimately useful applications. We'll see.

equally good and bad, now your app is dependent on facebooks grace, i would rather see a quality score type system, where its a install to unistall ratio. 85 percent and above and you start getting warnings etc..

Judging by the number of zombie/pirate/vampire/werewolf invites I get, I think the majority of people don't give a shit about the usefulness of the apps. Even if 95% install FacebookCthulu, I still don't care.

In fact, as was mentioned before, I don't think I care about Facebook apps at all. The only one I installed was iLike, back when it was pretty much the only app available. I installed it solely because I liked the aesthetic of having all the images of all the bands I like tiled in a square. Facebook apps are a dead platform now, if they were ever even alive to begin with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com