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Facebook Messenger Platform

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Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#231

Post by crwll »

codeka wrote: post #152
JoshTriplett wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and a plumbing system that requires most houses to own a plunger. Getting off topic for the article at hand, but what's different in Australian plumbing in that area?

https://youtu.be/ryIQYYogQ8A I've literally never owned a plunger in my whole life, and I don't know anybody who does. It baffles me everything I'm in the US and every toilet has a plunger!

I don't think any toilet built here in Finland since at least the 50's (some of those still exist, earlier I'm not sure of) have needed a plunger either, those things just work. The US plunger thing just baffles me. And banking too, sure.

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#232

Post by brian_cloutier »

wcummings wrote: post #108
mahyarm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go help the signal project! It needs ios-desktop integration and help elsewhere. But it's almost there as far as a complete chat solution. https://github.com/whispersystems/

You have to sign a CLA, no thanks.

What is your objection to CLAs? I generally think they're nice but don't know much about them.

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#233

Post by dbbk »

pat_space wrote: post #157

Does anyone see Messenger as a potential Skype for business/Slack/Hipchat competitor? I feel like the technology is on par, but the link to my personal facebook kills it for me.

Well, Facebook at Work has Messenger built-in, just scoped to your organisation. So I guess they're already doing it.

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#235

Post by matwood »

Rapzid wrote: post #188
matwood wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't these be the default in all new construction everywhere? Are there downsides?

Not that I'm aware of. Lived in NZ for 5 years and just moved into a brand new construction in CA just a few months back. Terrible. I've had to plunge(technically I use the scrubber to generate the pressure) a few times already :( Also, the showers mostly all have baskets under the drain caps to capture hair and stuff now.

I searched Lowes website and could not find any toilets like this. There has to be some reason!

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#236

Post by Jtsummers »

jmagoon wrote: post #206
Jtsummers wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I must be missing something. How is FB Messenger here anything other than a means of connecting to customers? If the concern is that FB will ape your app, then your app isn't sufficiently differentiated from their offerings. I want to write a game server, say for Go (the game, not the language). I want to make one (or the sole) method of connecting to it FB Messenger (hypothetical, not actually doing this, and th…

Couldn't FB leverage their platform to strike better deals with, in the pizza example, Papa John's competitors? And then shut down Papa John's FB platform (or sunset some critical API functionality)? Facebook could also build their own 'pizza ordering' bot, and then force any pizza vendor to go through that bot (and pay), while simultaneously shutting down any other implementation of the same idea. Imagine being Venm…

I want to write a reply to everyone, why does this have to be a tree and not a graph.

Facebook makes money off businesses using Facebook to connect to customers. They barely make money directly off customers.

It should be expected that FB will disrupt any digital service. Be that payment (peer-to-peer, customer-to-business), access to digital media (video, image, news, music). What they won't do is replace music studios. They won't replace movie studios. REPLACE is key. They may make entries into content production, by partnership or a standalone venture, but they will not cut out other content providers. FB's network is predicated on access. Cutting off customer access to things they want is a surefire way to lose those customers. Yes, FB can make the terms more onerous for businesses, particularly competitors. But they will suffer if they push it too far and end up backing off or flailing about wildly until they fail. Most likely, they'll back off.

Amazon with Amazon Prime Video has not cut out access to different movie and television studio content just because they make their own. Same with Netflix and Hulu. If they were to do so, the value they provide to consumers would go to near-zero. There'd be no reason to subscribe to their services if you only got their (limited) content. Who wants to spend $8/month for one channel's worth of content anymore when that gets you dozens of channels with a competitor?

Same thing with news, video games, and just about anything else.

If your product is really just acting as a middle man, expect a Google or FB or Amazon to step in and screw you. Yes.

So exist on the outside. Make the games, not the game room. Make the movie, not the theater. Make the music, not the stage. Make something that the middle-man's customers want, let the middle-man do his job of connecting you to those customers (well, contract with them).

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#237

Post by Jtsummers »

rybosome wrote: post #196
Jtsummers wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I must be missing something. How is FB Messenger here anything other than a means of connecting to customers? If the concern is that FB will ape your app, then your app isn't sufficiently differentiated from their offerings. I want to write a game server, say for Go (the game, not the language). I want to make one (or the sole) method of connecting to it FB Messenger (hypothetical, not actually doing this, and th…

That's a reasonable point, but "sufficiently differentiated from their offerings" is pretty broad. Anything that's not a physical service could be considered insufficiently differentiated, not to mention that they could screw you much worse than simple imitation. Gussying up your idea and presenting it in a more integrated manner through internal APIs would be tame compared to the fact that they can actually revoke y…

Right. If I make a business connecting small business inventory lists to FB messenger so people can find out what's there to buy/steal (hey, you know someone will eventually think of this), FB will eventually offer this. Or Square (being in a better position right now to do so, FB isn't in the point-of-sale system yet). This pretty much means that if you build any middle-man business, you should expect it to fail in the long-run (at best, get acquired), unless you can develop a sufficiently large network to stand on your own (very hard at this stage, but not impossible).

Make the video games, ideally not casual or not simply implementations of existing, public domain, games like chess or something. Make the music. Make the movies. Make the articles. FB and others will connect you to customers because that's their value proposition to customers: connecting you to the things you want. They have no need to connect you to a middle man when they can be the middle man (why would they connect you to Steam or GoG, when they can replace those platforms in short order?).

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#238

Post by Jtsummers »

ascendantlogic wrote: post #205
Jtsummers wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You build anything meaningful on this and Facebook has you by the you-know-whats and can pull the rug out from under you at will. Is that accurate? If I build a chat-based application, why can't I build out interfaces to various services? It may not be trivial, since some will offer features that others don't, but what's the principal problem preventing me from building a chat-based application that works over Goog…

And that may be perfectly fine right now. But if they change their TOS tomorrow that says you're not allowed to do that and shut you down because of it you're good and fucked. They have all the users. They have the platform the users are on. Therefore they hold all the cards.

They're unlikely to do that. First, it's practically impossible to enforce a "don't use other messaging platforms" clause. I mean, they'll be pulling in a lot of companies early on that use SMS or similar to interface with customers already. Messenger is just going to be one part of those companies' communication arsenal. Second, if they did, you'd see lawsuits or major players leaving (for the same reason as #1, they're already on other platforms, they don't want to shut them down). A business needs to connect with as many customers as possible. If 80% of customers are on FB, and 70% are on Google, and 99.9% are on SMS, connecting to each of those platforms makes sense. But only one of them makes sense to use exclusively. Those are made up and wildly wrong numbers, but the real numbers will bear this concept out. FB won't have 100% of a business's chat-based customers, and unless they have > 90 or 95%, then exclusivity would be absurd.

Re: Facebook Messenger Platform

#240

Post by Spivak »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #217
daptaq wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really competition though? You choose A, Facebook wins. You choose B, Facebook wins. I believe WhatsApp and FB Messenger are the two top chat networks right now (sadly), at least when looking at regional dominance. And since the value of a network to the individual is dependant on the size, AND they're locked up, they win whatever you choose. You might loose because you chose the network with less friends, but…

How is this not different from the strategy MS used to follow either kill opponents or buy them? How did the anti trust dept of US allow whatsapp acquisition since it literally made FB king of everything digital?

Mostly because they still have tons of competitors in the messaging space and they're not leveraging their success in social networking to force success in messaging. I'm personally reachable from 10-15 different forms of messaging (and neither WhatsApp nor FB messenger), and most people probably have at least 4-5 so it's a really tough argument that because of Facebook users have to use WhatsApp or FB messenger.
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