Comment by flyosity | Hacker News Reader

Comment by flyosity | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is up to something really big.

Awhile ago they brought on Brandon Walkin (http://www.brandonwalkin.com/blog/) who is, arguably, one of the most detailed-oriented user interface designers on the planet. He's also a very talented Cocoa developer and apps that he's worked on have won Apple Design Awards.

Next, they acquired Sofa, another Apple Design Award-winning design & software firm who have created some of the best-looking apps for OS X.

Now they nabbed Push Pop Press, founded by Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris, who were both instrumental to the launch of the iPhone on the software side.

Facebook is building an army of UI designers/developers who 1) used to work at Apple, or 2) have built apps Apple has deemed best-in-class.

I'd be really surprised if Facebook isn't working on something big to go up against Apple and Google. There were rumors of a Facebook phone, perhaps Facebook is building their own hardware and need a world-class design team to craft its OS? I can't see Facebook sticking all this amazing talent on a redesign of Photos or Chat, or updating icons in Facebook's iPhone app.

I doubt Facebook would build a hardware device. Instead, I think they'll do a 'social OS' that uses Android for all the low-level stuff, but with the Google apps all replaced with apps that have deep Facebook integration (messages, contacts, photos, etc.).

Microsoft Bing apps (e.g. Maps) could round out the features that FB doesn't build themselves, and they could use Amazon's Appstore in lieu of Android Market.

But to your point, it's possible these designers are at work making this social OS beautiful. Android in the back, iOS in the front.

Facebook won't build their competing phone OS on top of android - Google controls android and Google is facebook's biggest competitor.

"Google controls android"

Meh, they control it to an extent. The core open sourced Android (gingerbread atm) is clearly "good enough" that all anyone has to do to credibly fork it and still deliver a high end device is bring as much to the table as Google itself does.

That's not a herculean task although only a handful of companies qualify and most of those are better off jumping through Google's hoops to get the full experience anyway. Facebook probably isn't one that wants to jump through Google's hoops though.

I'm not saying the FB phone will be a success. Clearly some people want it. Let's go benefit of the doubt and say it will be technically awesome. Well so were a lot of other flops. I think a FB phone is one of those things on a knifes edge that could be a Vista/Zune/Edsel level flop or could be the iDevice killer every tech pundit has been waiting on for the last decade.

More likely built on WP7 than Android. Microsoft + Facebook are all ready in bed with Skype

+1, there's definitely an interesting pattern of Facebook acquiring top Apple-related design talent.

TechCrunch has a series of posts on "Project Spartan", a high-priority project within Facebook where they're rumored to be making a new massive mobile distribution platform based on HTML5 (http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/15/facebook-project-spartan/). Maybe related?

//end rampant speculation

And they also hired Geohot last month. Might really well add to the facebook phone idea!

Also the great Ben Barry (http://blog.designforfun.com/) of the design cult forum theroot42.org and other places now works at Facebook.

No no no, there's no way a Facebook phone would take off (especially in the already crowded market). Facebook's environment is built around iterating quickly, with okay solutions, and checking for bugs by pushing it out. It's a great hacking spirit and probably fun to work with, but is really ill suited to hardware and consumer products (look at how long it even took Google to get used to having discrete releases)

A Facebook phone is really just any gingerbread phone the hardware maker is currently making minus Google apps plus Facebook apps.

Obviously Facebook is making a huge effort to change their design DNA.

Push Pop also won an ADA... I think you're on to something.

Wow..thats awesome! May be building next-gen HTML5 stuff (based on TC reports abt HTML5)

They also recently hired George Hotz (geohot), a well known iphone unlocker...

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