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Comment by jameshart | Hacker News Reader

We live in the age of wonders. The internet and mobile devices create endless possibilities for people to communicate, learn and interact. And at Facebook, a company which can, if it chooses, pick from among the brightest engineering minds and focus their efforts on any problem it chooses, the power to concentrate years of programming knowledge on the capabilities afforded to us by this astonishing bounty of personal technology has produced:

"A new way to share photos and videos"

And they don't even seem to have a monetization strategy for it.

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Did you know there are over 150 varieties of Finches? Each slightly different, maybe color difference or a larger beak or bigger wingspan. They came about by iterating on the Finches that came before.

In fact, that's how most advancements come about in nature, poetry, art, and yes, even technology. We take what came before an iterate on it.

I'm trying to think of a giant leap that came out of nowhere, but I can't.

Photos and videos are important to me. Really important. It's how I see my family 1000's of miles away or my daughter 5 miles away when I'm at work.

And just like in nature, either this iteration will thrive or die out eventually.

I like this analogy. Silicon valley generates random mutations of existing ideas, without thought or direction, and occasionally lands, by pure chance, on something slightly better, which survives at the expense of other inferior mutations.

I guess that maybe the developers working on "a new way to share photos and video" kid themselves that they're making something different; something that really is revolutionary. But no, what they're really doing is tweaking the shape of a beak thinking it'll make a better finch.

So I do kind of have to ask: is making random tweaks to the genome of the photo sharing application in the hope they'll be successful really the best use of the talents of all those developers?

I think this is basically what scott adams pivot article said.

> So I do kind of have to ask: is making random tweaks to the genome of the photo sharing application in the hope they'll be successful really the best use of the talents of all those developers?

These developers CHOOSE to work at Facebook. If they don't feel as though re-inventing the slide show would be the best use of their time, there are thousands of companies which do cooler stuff that would GLADLY have them.

Maybe the people who work for Facebook aren't as smart as you think they are. Actually, what's far more likely is that MAYBE JUST MAYBE not every one of the tens of thousands of people working at Facebook is a genius...

Tens of thousands?

6,800 as of March according to their 10-Q.

As of March Facebook has a reported 6,818 total full time employees. Certainly Thousands, but not tens of thousands.

> Silicon valley generates random mutations of existing ideas, without thought or direction, and occasionally lands, by pure chance, on something slightly better.

I would say that people do this. Silicon Valley does not do this "without thought or direction," but instead with great forethought and direction in the form of a "business plan."

The problem I see with this, is that this is not some earnest effort to improve photo sharing, but an obvious attempt to clone an existing and popular service with the hope of mining its popularity.

Truly the developers of this cannot think they created "a new way to share photos and video," unless they are ill. All they have done is applied a modest novelty to an existing concept. Not quite a "mutation" in the sense of a new species of Finch, but more in the vein of a parasite.

Penicillin.

I think that was more of a discovery than an invention

Marvellous. I'm going to start flipping random bits in memory. In a few million years I might have an interesting piece of software.

I think there are probably more efficient ways you can get to making an interesting piece of software. Building on the work of others, maybe?

> I'm trying to think of a giant leap that came out of nowhere, but I can't.

This isn't exactly a Manhattan Project or golden-age Bell Labs kind of deal. Some iterations are a bit more ambitious than others.

Unlike evolution, engineers can be goal directed. We can do better than Yet Another Finch that is Slightly More Yellow.

Nature is brutal and peoples' complaints over the app are a muted form of natural selection.

Also, did ed209 honestly claim artists churn out iterations of what came before, just like facebook churning out cloneware?

Sure. "Good artists borrow, great artists steal."

> complaints over the app are a muted form of natural selection.

that's not true. we uninstall and don't use the app. Remember Facebook •Camera? That has exited the gene pool.

> Also, did ed209 honestly claim artists churn out iterations of what came before, just like facebook churning out cloneware?

Yes. Just search for art movements, whether from 14th century Renaissance to 1950's pop art. Tell me artists were not "influenced" by other art being produced at the time.

>that's not true. we uninstall and don't use the app. Remember Facebook •Camera? That has exited the gene pool.

We also voice our opinions publicly, and there's nothing wrong with that. Most app stores have a review section specifically for this purpose, but one shouldn't let that limit their forums for speech.

>Yes. Just search for art movements, whether from 14th century Renaissance to 1950's pop art. Tell me artists were not "influenced" by other art being produced at the time.

Even the great artists who steal all the best stuff end up creating something new and never seen before.

I'm happy to see someone who shares my exact same sentiment. I mean, when I read "but there's a catch, they have to send something first" I thought it was a joke. First of all, the fact that they made another snapchat with just a little spin on it says to me that they don't really know what they're doing; they're just after money, there's no vision behind it. Secondly, with all the useful products and services they could be developing for the betterment of society, they decided it would be a good idea to sink money in yet another pics sharing app. I fear the future will be just this: a selected few engineers making toys for the entertainment of the masses living on minimum wage. Bleak times indeed.

I think it's more indicative of the way applications are being used these days.

Create a gimmick -> gain incredible popularity -> try to monetize your product -> users switch to the next gimmick -> create a new gimmick.

Which does rather imply there's a big crash coming.

That's not a zero-sum nor value-creating cycle: everyone will slowly haemorrhage users, at the risk that the next "thing" isn't something that easily centralizes to a corporation - i.e. a generation of school kids who get big into some type of mesh-networked thing which solely goes device to device.

It would only have to be created once.

If it's created as a platform (hear, a protocol) it may effectively need to be created only once. The whole online world is unknowingly waiting for it, and I feel it coming our way like, at raging speed.

I'm with you to a point, but this objection is a close relative of the "we can put a man on the moon, but we can't ______?" argument.

There are other companies, not focused from the beginning on advancing social connection in the Internet age, that are spending billions of dollars and millions of man-hours on improving the world in other ways.

> improving the world in other ways

Are you implying that Slingshot has improved the world?

nope

> And they don't even seem to have a monetization strategy for it.

They'll collect the location information, your circle of friends, etc. and enrich your profile (what they know about you). That helps them monetize better.

FB is an ad network, basically (or will become one). They have data on ~1B users, and the value of this data goes up with the amount of interaction there is between users.

Outside of Search, ads monetize pretty badly (what are Display ad CPMs now.. $0.50? ). That's because of extremely low engagement. The more data FB has about you, the more engaging ad it can pick for you; and thus they can charge a lot more.

So this product by itself doesn't have to monetize at all, as long as the net effect of this product is higher value for FB.

Sharing photos and videos is an activity that brings meaning to billions of lives, and it's not unreasonable to try to improve upon it.

Facebook is a large company with a number of revenue streams. Every single feature they undertake does not need to individually earn its keep. (And I'm not sure why that aspect would concern you in any case.)

>Sharing photos and videos is an activity that brings meaning to billions of lives, and it's not unreasonable to try to improve upon it.

On the other hand, the "meaning" that people derive from sharing can be defined in some basic terms (e.g. interaction, connection, etc.). At what point does the incremental "improvement" in sharing mechanics no longer justify the resources required to produce that improvement? First, we share it. Then, we share it and it disappears. Next, we can't see what's shared until we share something back. Is this really improving on the basic "meaning"?

Sure, Facebook gets to decide how their resources are applied. But, I don't think we should pretend that there's some great and noble effort to bring still more meaning to billions of lives. Facebook wants a novel way to keep you on Facebook where you can bring more meaning to their bottom line. Period.

And, you know what else has meaning? Talking to people. Having lunch with people. Seeing people; not watching their latest "broadcast", but actually seeing them.

I'm just over it, and I'm guessing others are as well. There's just this constant, vapid, soul-sucking effort to endlessly distract people with some novel piece of nothingness as a means of generating still more revenue.

Gets a little old.

It's these comments that get a little old. Yes, obviously Facebook wants to make more money, and they do that by selling your information to advertisers. Thanks for the reminder. At the same time, I don't think it's a stretch to say that Facebook has enriched the lives of millions of people. I know it has allowed me to stay in touch with family and friends who I otherwise would probably speak to more rarely. That's meaningful to me.

I'm also tired of the "why don't you go out and have a REAL conversation" comments. I would love to have lunch with the friends I keep in touch with primarily on Facebook. Unfortunately, they live halfway across the country, so it's not that easy.

Just because the interactions happen online doesn't mean they're not real or meaningful. The fact that your comment on an online forum suggests otherwise is particularly rich.

Honestly, it's these predictable replies that are even older.

>Facebook has enriched the lives of millions of people

Right. So, not saying Facebook has no utility. Yes, we know it serves a purpose for a lot of people. Clearly.

>it has allowed me to stay in touch with family and friends who I otherwise would probably speak to more rarely.

Yes, we also know that's the number one use case, which serves as Facebook's crowning contribution to humanity. I won't argue what it means to you or anyone else personally. I do think it replaces more meaningful interaction with a relatively superficial pub/sub model. I also believe that it isolates people and I am aware of studies which have indicated the same. That you and others find some value in it doesn't make it a net positive for society, or even for you for that matter. But, that's really not my argument anyway.

>they live halfway across the country, so it's not that easy.

Well, you could call them and invest some one-on-one time if they were meaningful relationships but, in any case, I am referring more to the overall tendancy of people to marginalize an increasing number of relationships (even local) to a pub/sub tool like Facebook. But, really, I am objecting more to this never-ending devaluing of relationships by Facebook whose motive is to capture your social activity (relationships) by any means necessary, irrespective of the actual value-add (or subtract) to those relationships.

Of course we all know that their purpose is to make money. I wasn't dropping that as a great revelation. My point is that it should and does matter that we give so much of our relationships over to a company whose interests may run orthogonal to the preservation of value in those relationships.

>The fact that your comment on an online forum suggests otherwise is particularly rich.

It's really not. You just missed the point.

I suppose this can depend on the context of the users. Personally, I've gone through the beginnings of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat (the last of which I've uninstalled and never use). Having more than a decade of various types of social networking, I've "grown up" on what amounts to a more wordy, involved kind of interpersonal communication.

The generation of people who are just turning 18, though, have grown up with more immediate forms of social networking. Snapchat, Secret, etc reign supreme in younger demographics.

An interesting parallel is the concept of a meme. For people who were around for the growth of the meme, they're stories or actions. For younger folk, they're image macros.

So don't work for Facebook. Build something that matters, or work for someone who is. Simple as that.

You don't think they're building things that matter? have you seen their app install ad network?

People want to spend lots of time sharing photos of themselves and cats. Blame humans not Facebook.

Exactly. The parent of your comment says "The internet and mobile devices create endless possibilities for people to communicate, learn and interact."

How are people going to communicate and interact? Probably by sending text, images, and videos to each other...I'd love to hear some proposals for alternatives but I'm kind of tired of the "cat photo sharing" pejorative, because that's what people want, that's how they connect with each other, and if you can actually come up with a better idea you'll be very wealthy.

>the capabilities afforded to us by this astonishing bounty of personal technology has produced: "A new way to share photos and videos"

Where's the double upvote link?

And, it's not just the waste of resources/developer talent. It's also the complete dumbing down of everyone consuming this stuff. If this "succeeds", then we now have yet another novel way to waste our precious time replacing real relationships with superficial interactions, and otherwise doing very little of actual consequence.

We are iterating on superficiality, distraction, and nothingness. I suppose one fine day, we'll perfect it.

This is more about about promoting sharing as a cultural behavior than making money on this particular product. By incentivizing sharing, companies end up with more personal information. It forces lurkers to participate (some might argue that's a good thing).

The service forces you to pay for content with your own content, whereas before the payment was implicit, or at least invisible -- as long as you were in the store, you consented to being monitored.

> It forces lurkers to participate

This line of iambic pentameter is the first one that gets to the point of the OP.

The monetization strategy is to pump ads in to it.

> And they don't even seem to have a monetization strategy for it.

Not yet, but mature messaging services seem to have reasonable monetization that isn't primarily display-ad-based. I understand "stickers" to be one of the main ones.

while I have to agree, still, it has a psychological experiment side which is quite interesting. You don't see the picture, you have to be active to reveal it. Will this pull you into being active?

So, it might as well be the virus being tested, not the photo-sharing-app that is infected.

cynical piece of shit. you don't understand how innovation works. the world is full of people like you and it is quite sad. more sad to see this as the top comment on hn

"We live in the age of wonders" is that so ?

Yes. As it turns out, people really like other people.

It's you. You are the monetization strategy.

Like others that have responded to this, I agree with you on principle. However, this kind of "innovation" is what they need to serve the simplistic minds that form the core user base of Facebook. New ways to share photos and videos are exactly what the kinds of people that use Facebook want from Facebook - nothing more, nothing less. Quite simply, Zuckerberg knows his audience.

Remember, these are people that vote for President of the United States based upon what their favorite rapper says about the candidates in 140 characters on Twitter. In that context, a new sharing app is revolutionary.

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