Why Facebook Will Fail Miserably Building a Smartphone | Hacker News Reader

Why Facebook Will Fail Miserably Building a Smartphone

stevecheney.posterous.com

28 pointsczzarr26 comments

I was onboard until "The Facebook mobile app is absolutely awful – and hasn’t improved in years. A lot of these reasons are subtle like lack of support for the Nitro JavaScript engine in native apps which wrap HTML content like Facebook’s (Apple doesn’t allow this)."

Horseshit. The Facebook mobile app is absolutely awful because Facebook allows it to be absolutely awful. Look at all of the rock-solid, supremely pleasant, sync-and-serve social experiences on iOS and tell me exactly why Facebook is a special case.

Dropped posts, stuttering scrolling, lost comments, photo upload glitches, punishing load times, punishing layout glitches, nonfunctional UI... none of this can be laid at Apple's feet. A magical ~JIT Javascript~ wand isn't going to solve any of this mess.

Word. Facebook's iOS apps are really really poor. Even their performance in mobile Safari with the standard Facebook website is very bad. I really don't get why their performance on mobile safari is any different from safari on a desktop. It's just pathetic for an extremely profitable mega corp to ship such poor products.

It's much better on Android, if you ignore the 20 second wait everytime you open the app or navigate around too much.

The mobile webpage is nearly identical. Minus push notifications, but it renders instantaneously, scrolls great on my GNex, etc. I just have a Facebook icon Bookmark to Chrome for Android instead of the Facebook app installed (and my battery life improves!)

I don't know anything about iOS (or their native Facebook app).

That said, I cannot believe that the Android app is better than anything else. It's .. sad. I wonder if this thing is build in some random two engineers 20% time and they usually work with iOS (or .. something else, but not Android) and really just do this task for the giggles.

I use the website on my device, because the native app fails to provide a bunch of things anyway - and it's sooooo sloooow..

I know this reads like a rant and it probably is. In fact, I use FB in a limited way and even there the native client is lacking. It's - ignoring all emotions for a second - really subpar on every level in my book.

Nah, I'm right there with you, but I'm given to understand, from my iOS-defensive-friends, that the iOS app is even worse. It has the slowness on the Android version with intermittent crashes.

It's not really incompetence by Facebook either. Facebook is strategically distancing itself from iOS by making the iOS native application almost identical to the HTML5 application in user experience (look at the previous iOS app by Joe Hewitt -- it was much better -- they didn't degrade it for no reason). Seriously, I can't immediately tell the difference between using it on iOS or from within Mobile Safari.

That way, they're protected when they get into a real pissing war with Apple -- if Apple pulls their app from the store for whatever reason, they have gotten their entire user base used to a Mobile Safari-quality experience.

> Google TV’s failures and the storied missteps around Google-branded Android smartphones prove this.

Sorry, but what missteps do you mean regarding the Nexus brand?

I'm not sure if you remember the Motorola ROKR, but Apple flopped a couple times before reinventing the phone industry.

Facebook's taken two cracks at it. They've got a massive war chest and one of the most recognized brands on earth plus 2 failures worth of experience under their belt.

Sure, mobile's a challenge - but it seems like you've thrown in the towel already on it. I don't think Facebook has quite yet.

Money and experience alone mean nothing. The ability to learn from that experience is what's important. Based on track records in other areas where they've been slow to learn (privacy) I'd expect they need to fail a minimum of 4-5 more times before they have any prayer of getting it right.

So, they're on attempt #3. Why get them at mad for trying? (it's not like they can get failures 4 and 5 out of the way without going through #3 first).

Their slow "learning curve" on privacy has been on purpose. They're trying to reshape how people view "sharing" and are succeeding in doing that w/ almost a billion people.

"In the game of thrones, you either win, or you die!" Apple is king of the world (the bit of it that isn't Chinese and has lots of money), it collects taxes, makes laws, executes peasants (you app store developer, you). Facebook, Microsoft, Google, these are rich noble families... they want to be king, they want to live, standing still is not an option - talk to RIM, Yahoo! or MySpace. This is a bid to break the tax monopoly that Apple has which Facebook needs to access to monetize mobile.

One small problem - making phones is hard, making phone operating systems is very hard. However there are 4 options that Facebook has : WebOS, Maemo, Blackberry 10 and.. Windows Mobile 8.

Hardware - well it is bloody hard, unless you have a lot of cash (errr) in which case - go thee, go thee to China. There are some very, very, very clever engineers in China (gee dad?) who if you will give them the volumes, will give you the kit you want.

The trick isn't going to be making a good phone, the trick will be selling it.

In the Game of Thrones no one gets what they want, but everyone gets something.

Well, if Facebook wants to be really serious about mobile, they can purchase RIM.

RIM has essentially everything facebook lacks - expertise in building consumer hardware, carrier relationships, retail channels, top-notch systems engineers, etc. They are also very cheap, with a current market cap of $5.5B.

Good idea. Though if they bought both Rim and Opera I think I'd cry. There is me trying to desperately escape Facebook.

RIM's been trying pretty hard to build a popular smartphone (in today's market) without much success. I'm not sure having their phone's "Facebookized" would make them that much more popular - and it would almost certainly not be popular with their remaining enterprise base.

Not to mention that my sense of the cultures of these two companies (admittedly, from the outside only) is that they're about as oil-and-water as you can get. Buying RIM would mean taking on maybe a billion or more in inventory risk, plus the risk that you'd see a lot of the talent walk out the door anyway (something that's been going on for a while now.)

RIM has around 16000 employees while Facebook has just 3000 employees. Even if Facebook buys RIM I think it would really difficult to integrate the two companies.

I'm not really sure what FB hopes to gain from trying to elbow their way into the mobile phone market. The market is pretty well divided between Google and Apple with MS and RIM mixed in as well.

It seems like there are cheaper ways to improve their users' experience on existing mobile platforms.

The only non-nefarious reason I can think of is they feel a threat from both Google and Apple in their area of expertise - social graphs.

Of course, it's possible that it's all a feint on the part of FB to get some loving from Apple.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...

>The only non-nefarious reason I can think of is they feel a threat from both Google and Apple in their area of expertise - social graphs.

Google, perhaps.

But Apple hasn't made much of an inroad into the social sphere at all. I'm not sure if it's even going to be something that they're going to consider moving into, considering the razor thin margins that social network companies make.

I think they tried Apple tried their hand at social with Ping which has not really been successful.

However, doesn't iOS now have some kind of special integration with Twitter? That must be pretty bad for Facebook.

iOS does have the twitter integration. I'm not sure why Apple(or Google) and Facebook haven't worked out a similar agreement, because it's really a win/win for everyone involved.

There's a race to control client, which is mobile. Apple or android can lock Facebook out or require them to use an ad system or a payment system. To control and profit in the future they need to own the entire stack, through to the user, only then will their revenue stream be drawbridge free.

I seriously think Facebook is going to collapse soon. It's so overhyped it's not even funny -- just look to their stocks to see a prime example. So many people are just itching to get away from it now that it can't last long. We'll see, of course. But it is soon to be a Myspace, et al.

The IPO was overvalued in my opinion, but I don't think the stock price is a great indicator of the future of the company. That said, I think a decline is possible, but will it happen soon? I don't know. Maybe the backlash will come from kids whose parents are essentially building profiles for them.

$16bn says they wont be collapsing anytime soon. . . .

They have cash (quite a bit, post-IPO) and revenue. Companies with cash and revenue don't collapse, even if their stock is overvalued. Myspace didn't "collapse" either, though ultimately it lost in the market to a better competitor.

It's possible Facebook will ultimately lose too, but it won't be because of their stock value or their being "overhyped". Hell, statistically it's much more likely that they'll be beaten by a much, much smaller company (though I guess G+ might do it too).

Why don't you put your money where your mouth is ... short them ... let us know how it works out :)

Just to be clear, I don't think they're going to go under as a company (edit: financially). By "collapse," I mean they're going to lose their relevance. The overvaluing of their IPO (and I feel their stock is still overvalued) is just one sign among many that I feel show it's not worth all the hype surrounding it. The problem is, FB doesn't know how to adapt. It's only one in a long line of social network, and it won't be the last. Or best.

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