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Facebook '2G Tuesdays' to better understand markets like India

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Re: Facebook '2G Tuesdays' to better understand markets like India

#71
post #3

They should also try using older/slower phones that are representative of those areas. I remember that I had an LG L7 which was barely usable at all even freshly reset.

Any employee can grab a crappy phone. Some of the Messenger crowd have 20+ phones on their desks.

Most don't stay with them for too long, though. It does really take an extra push to advance this. I had a Galaxy Young for two days after I cracked my normal phone's screen. It was kind of hellish.

Re: Facebook '2G Tuesdays' to better understand markets like India

#72
post #51

Do Facebookers never venture outside of cities? Because maybe the UK is weird, but getting 2G even in developed areas isn't that uncommon for me. Sure there's 4G in cities and 3G in many places, but there's plenty of places with poor signal or outdated transmitters (like the town I live in). (This is especially noticeable if you're in a train or a bus where you're frequently changing cells.)

I'm American, and I took a road trip last month from Dallas to NYC and back (going through Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and tiny bits of a few other states). Unless I was in a city, I only had 2G signal, and in a few places I didn't even have that (but those were rare). Edit: for reference, my carrier at the time was Simple Mobile, an MVNO of T-Mobile (I'm no longer with them anymore: I just activated…

Verizon and AT&T have vastly better coverage.

Re: Facebook '2G Tuesdays' to better understand markets like India

#73
post #49

We, at hike ( http://www.hike.in ), did following things: 1. gave the cheap android smartphone to use as their primary phone 2. asked employees to stay on 2G on their mobile phones It helped a us lot to improve our product for India market.

Your landing page takes 15 seconds to load on a simulated "Regular 3G" connection in Chrome. If you'd like I could walk you through fixing some of the most obvious problems, my contact info is in my profile.

I need help understanding why this is being down voted.

Re: Facebook '2G Tuesdays' to better understand markets like India

#74

It's worth noting that Chrome has a Device Emulation feature, which allows you to throttle connection speed to common presets such as EDGE/2G/3G/etc. It makes testing mobile layouts easier, at the least. https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/iter...

Also, Mac OS and iOS have the Network Link Conditioner, which can do the same thing (from a network perspective) at the system level: http://nshipster.com/network-link-conditioner/

And Windows, of course, has Fiddler:

http://www.telerik.com/download/fiddler

Re: Facebook '2G Tuesdays' to better understand markets like India

#75
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they were going to offer that service for free, which IMO changes the picture.

I agree that criticizing what's essentially a gift isn't "nice". But, on the other hand, this move reeks of evil-ness. Instead of bringing 3rd world people knowledge and freedom, we bring them Facebook. This is embarrassing.

People like to disparage Facebook, but it can be an incredibly useful tool. I'll give an example from my own life: Soon after I moved to Oakland, a neighbor recommended I join the neighborhood's Facebook group. It's become invaluable. Group members coordinate to help find missing pets, catch vandals, report stolen vehicles, and warn others about crime. City council members are also members of the group, so we work with them to fix problems. It's much more efficient and convenient than the standard ways of petitioning the local government.

This may seem like a trivial improvement, but it has caused the neighborhood to completely turn around. Everyone is amazed by how much better and safer the area has gotten. So I don't mind if Facebook's motives are ultimately profit-driven. People in developing countries could greatly benefit. It's win-win.

Re: Facebook '2G Tuesdays' to better understand markets like India

#76
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would rather pay for uniform access, but that's not an option for the market we are discussing. Given a large market that currently has nothing because they are unable to pay for anything, would you prefer that Facebook: A) Leave them alone with nothing. Or B) Give them free access to Facebook?

You are suggesting we sacrifice the 'net neutrality' principle for a short term gain. Once you let this happen, the telco's will continue with their differential pricing policies citing it has been done before. Thank, but no thanks. I would prefer we rather stick with the net neutrality principles.

I'm suggesting that it's complicated. In all of your replies you are talking about what you want to pay for and what you expect in return. But, this isn't about you. It's about hundreds of millions of the poorest people on Earth. If you went on tour of India to personally tell a few tens of thousands of them that because free Facebook access would set a bad precedent (which you are totally right about, btw) they should continue to be cut of entirely until they get rich enough to pay for the level of access you already enjoy, you might find that the issue warrants a bit more thought.

Re: Facebook '2G Tuesdays' to better understand markets like India

#77
post #73
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your landing page takes 15 seconds to load on a simulated "Regular 3G" connection in Chrome. If you'd like I could walk you through fixing some of the most obvious problems, my contact info is in my profile.

I need help understanding why this is being down voted.

As you asked.. firstly because doesn't speak to the actual idea being put forward, merely implying that they are—at best—incompetent and at worst hypocritical. It then compounds this faux pas with a tender for work which seems a little galling.

Re: Facebook '2G Tuesdays' to better understand markets like India

#78

We, at hike ( http://www.hike.in ), did following things: 1. gave the cheap android smartphone to use as their primary phone 2. asked employees to stay on 2G on their mobile phones It helped a us lot to improve our product for India market.

Your app looks interesting, how come no "About" or "Team" page??

From when "Team" page is a standard?

Re: Facebook '2G Tuesdays' to better understand markets like India

#79
post #63
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is going to pay for the uniform access to everything you want?

We are not asking anything for free. We will pay for a internet connection, for the bandwidth and for the speed. Once done, we wish to use that bandwidth and speed they way we like. But we are not going to pay extra money just to use a chat application over the internet, or make a VoIP call.

This isn't about you, though. It's about the millions of people who can't afford to pay.
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