Comment by ary | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ary | Hacker News Reader

> Meanwhile, to calm fears about Facebook spying on Parse developer data, the company issued the statement “We currently have no plans to make any changes to how Parse app data is used.”

Keyword: currently

So yeah, we all rag on Facebook pretty hard here. What I'm most interested in is, if the uptick in adoption for Parse is true, why do developers feel more comfortable now that Facebook owns the product/company? Given the general pessimism about Facebook's fostering of their own API, and their laughable advocacy of privacy this whole article smacks of PR.

In my mind the whole modus operandi of companies like Facebook and Google is to absorb and mine as much information as possible. So if they aren't going to peek and analyze did they really just buy Parse for the API expertise?

"why do developers feel more comfortable now that Facebook owns the product/company?"

This happens with the majority of acquisitions that, as soon as they are acquired they see an uptick in signups. The uptick would be more interesting if they announced it in a month’s time or in an even longer period of time. There are several reasons for this including, the perception of “X has acquired them and they’re a massive company which means that the service will be around for a while” (which is not necessarily true) and the fact that, the acquired company gets a lot of press from areas they may previously not have done so they get new users either as customers or simply joining to ‘look’ at the service – although they may not become actual valuable users – by those I mean ‘look’ at the service, I’m talking about other employees of the acquiring company, shareholders of the acquiring company etc.

I'll go even further to say that this can probably be attributed to the Facebook + Parse announcement being the first time many developers ever heard of Parse.

Exactly. I'm in that boat.

I had heard of Parse via Hacker News, but didn't ever pay attention to what they did. After the news of the purchase I looked at their offering and said, "This is exactly what I need for my next project."

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