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dmitryminkovsky

If today FAANG had to choose: shut down your websites or shut down your native apps: which would it be?

Which platform did Clubhouse build out first? Why?

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For Facebook and Apple, mobile (native) is definitely the most important.

Advertising accounts for 99.9% of Facebook revenue, with mobile advertising accounting for 94% [1]

Not sure for the other ones.

[1]https://www.businessofapps.com/data/facebook-statistics/

Clubhouse is targeting the middle-class silicon valley market right now (quite literally, those are the only people who got invites early on), who of course are infatuated with apps and have the money for fancy phones, tablets, etc. It's smart marketing for them to go where their customers are right now.

The web is for everyone--I can go to an internet cafe in a slum and browse and buy from the same Amazon.com as I can from inside a $15M mansion. It's a quantum leap in access to the world using the web.

Not sure what personal income has to do with anything. Hand held touch devices have revolutionized Internet access. The deeper down the income scale you go, the less likely you are to encounter a personal computer while you’ll still likely encounter a smart phone. Amazon will work on the web or as an app on that phone, but with the app the user experience will be better. That may be because Google and Apple have intentionally prioritized native APIs while hindering PWAs, but that’s still the case.

Anyway, I do still wonder: if FAANG had to pick between native and web apps, which do you think would they pick?

Apart from Google which has a complex answer. Most of the traffic from FAANG are now coming from Apps.

Facebook could have shut down their Website and it wouldn't even have a 10% revenue impact.

F: A few months ago I'd have said apps. Now after their latest spat with A, maybe they're having a think?

A: web, for sure. That's how they make their money.

A: I wonder how much money they would lose if they shut down their website? Would they sell their stuff on A instead?

N: Who cares, it's only there to make the acronym nicer.

G: Web.

What would Microsoft say?

Microsoft would try to make everyone happy by creating 200 different GUI tool-kits that do similar things on different platforms but with each one having slightly different syntax but giving you the capability of using different languages. If they targeted languages they don't own, they would extend the languages with Microsoft specific keywords!

"Progressive Web Apps on Windows overview"

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-...

My own self would say native apps, 10 years ago.

Today, 10 years later, I say Web.

They can collect more metrics and have more control when it's a native app. My web browser is still my most used app on my phone.

But I think betting on the web actually meant to bet on native for each respective platform. Bet on native for the web is betting on HTML/CSS/JavaScript. And then have a Java/Kotlin version for Android. And have a Swift/Objective C version for iOS

I think the learning is, write once run everywhere is what has been tried and failed time and time again for user applications. Java failed many times, Silverlight, Flash, etc.

The reason is always the same, user experience is limited when you go that route, and it eventually loses out to competitors who offer the better user experience on the user's platform of choice.

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