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Facebook Messenger Platform

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221–230 of 248 posts

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#221
post #30
post #10

Facebook seems to slowly be building out the feature set that WeChat ( https://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/ ) has had for ages. It seems like Facebook first set out to capture the whole market, and are now slowly monetizing it fully. WeChat has achieved incredible ARPU (>$7/user/year) through a combination of chat APIs, 3rd party bots and integrated payments Facebook. If Facebook can achieve a simil…

The ARPU # is mis-leading. According to the Economist article, 85% of the revs are from gaming, not "to hail a taxi, order food delivery, buy movie tickets, play casual games, check in for a flight, send money to friends, access fitness tracker data, book a doctor appointment, get banking statements, pay the water bill, find geo-targeted coupons, recognize music, search for a book at the local library, meet strangers…

I asked a Uber driver in China why he thought DiDiKuaiChe (local competitor) was more popular, and he said "because you can order one through WeChat... And everyone has WeChat"

Of those services, gaming is probably the most mature which is why it generates the most revenue, but give it a few years and I'm sure more of those will become far more significant..

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#222
post #30
post #10

Facebook seems to slowly be building out the feature set that WeChat ( https://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/ ) has had for ages. It seems like Facebook first set out to capture the whole market, and are now slowly monetizing it fully. WeChat has achieved incredible ARPU (>$7/user/year) through a combination of chat APIs, 3rd party bots and integrated payments Facebook. If Facebook can achieve a simil…

The ARPU # is mis-leading. According to the Economist article, 85% of the revs are from gaming, not "to hail a taxi, order food delivery, buy movie tickets, play casual games, check in for a flight, send money to friends, access fitness tracker data, book a doctor appointment, get banking statements, pay the water bill, find geo-targeted coupons, recognize music, search for a book at the local library, meet strangers…

I asked a Uber driver in China why he thought DiDiKuaiChe (local competitor) was more popular, and he said "because you can order one through WeChat... And everyone has WeChat"

Of those services, gaming is probably the most mature which is why it generates the most revenue, but give it a few years and I'm sure more of those will become far more significant..

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#223
post #161

I hope people will help support matrix.org instead of building on a platform like this.

I just checked out some of the previous HN posts about matrix.org - I´d love something like it to become widely used... in the same way that I'm hoping for a Mozilla Persona, diaspora, etc. to become succesful. Is that ever going to happen though? With all this money going to centralised products?

Probably not, which is why I said "hope." I'm doing my part by working on implementations of matrix.org components myself. Obviously, I can't predict the future, but I think it's unlikely any open system will "beat" or even compete meaningfully with the big proprietary systems. It's like a small group of well meaning political activists thinking they can beat lobbyists with unlimited funds. It's an army vs a couple people wielding sticks.

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#224
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what that means, but you've got my attention. Could you elaborate on what you have in mind?

# PROBLEM Software is fragmented. This leads to poor user experience. - I have 100+ apps on my phone - I have 1000+ online accounts I need to discover these apps/websites/services, repeat the same information over and over again, learn their features and limitations. They don't talk to each other, which means that I need to continuously update them. We're humans, we're smart, we adapt easily, we got used to it, we do…

I'm working on Retrace, "Graph-oriented communication" for sharing the ups and downs of experiences via a waveform interface. Reach out if you'd like to chat!

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#225

I'm crying. Remember when messaging was built on open platforms and standards like XMPP and IRC? The golden year(s?) when Google Talk worked with AIM and anyone could choose whatever client they preferred? Welcome to the future friends when we must pay to battle the keymasters and gatekeepers on their terms to do what we used to do ourselves, for free. First they took my RSS, then they took my XMPP... Who can guess w…

Messaging on XMPP and IRC sucked. Good riddance!

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#226

I'm crying. Remember when messaging was built on open platforms and standards like XMPP and IRC? The golden year(s?) when Google Talk worked with AIM and anyone could choose whatever client they preferred? Welcome to the future friends when we must pay to battle the keymasters and gatekeepers on their terms to do what we used to do ourselves, for free. First they took my RSS, then they took my XMPP... Who can guess w…

And XMPP has consistently been behind on innovation. I used IRC and Jabber for a really long time. I don't know how long I was waiting for basic audio and video chat in XMPP, which is now a standard thing in almost all proprietary communication systems. People have been wanting those features for a very long time and they migrated away from the open systems because they were consistently behind on features. I don't u…

Never mind audio/video, the group chat UX for Jabber still sucks, as does the experience when logging in from multiple devices (something you'd think tech people would have caught onto early).

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#227

I'm crying. Remember when messaging was built on open platforms and standards like XMPP and IRC? The golden year(s?) when Google Talk worked with AIM and anyone could choose whatever client they preferred? Welcome to the future friends when we must pay to battle the keymasters and gatekeepers on their terms to do what we used to do ourselves, for free. First they took my RSS, then they took my XMPP... Who can guess w…

The timing of this post feels so weird. Yesterday I was running a script that purged my facebook activity completely, and I was in the middle of setting up an xmpp messenger on my tablet just so I can communicate with people using that platform. Then I've noticed that the api is gone, with no way to connect but their official app.

Guess I'll just tell everyone that matters my phone number and mail address, if they do not already know, and call it a day. I've wasted so much of my time and attention on facebook.

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#229
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can take back the internet. We've been at a disadvantage for so long because centralized services are easier to build great experiences with than federated services. Messaging protocols require identities, and federated identities are user-hostile. They worked once: email. Never again. Luckily, we're in the middle of a decentralization renaissance. Instead of managing your identity on a server controlled by Facebo…

You're right about UX being central to the problem, but you're missing a major part of it here. UX is hard . Getting great user experience takes IMHO a lot more pain than getting algorithms and systems to work right (in most cases). UX is about endless revisions, a lot of boring and often ugly code, obsessing about pixels and quirky details of your UI's "story," and other things that are very time consuming, not fun,…

But isn't that exactly where countless free and paid clients/apps of varying quality for the user to choose from would come in handy? Take RSS as an example - the technology as open for everyone, but as a profit-seeking company you can still seduce with high-quality, polished client / feed reader. Of course, that option would be open to any number of freelancers, one-man-operations and other indie developers, not just the Googles and Facebooks of this world. A great thing for the enduser, not necessarily a desirable outcome for the mentioned companies.

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#230
post #207
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak for New Zealand, but the whole disposal method is fundamentally different. Instead of relying upon the swirling/draining motion to dispose of the waste, water is forced straight down into the much larger gap. Every kiwi/aussie who has stayed with me (in multiple homes) has complained about US toilets!

You forgot to mention the option of half flush or full flush.

Some newer toilets in the US will have this, but it's not nearly as common as it is in AU. I figure it's because of differing attitudes on water conservation.
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