Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 100 posts

Re: Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

#81

Post by okaramian »

jrockway wrote: post #30
joe_the_user wrote: post #17

The thing is, everyone I know uses Facebook the website but hates Facebook the company. I don't see the Facebook brand selling phones (I recall they rated on the bottom of brands in some study).

People hate everything. The big banks and airlines all rate at the bottom of customer satisfaction surveys, and yet they're big because everyone does a lot of business with them. People complain, but they don't change who they do business with. I think a Facebook phone will be massively successful on name alone.

Change takes time. People started seriously thinking about/hating big banks right after the financial collapse, so it's only been about 2 years.

As a simple example more people are starting to use credit unions: http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100...

Change is never instant, it takes time for alternatives to develop and for people to buy in.

Re: Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

#82

Post by gaiusparx »

I'll bet its not a hardware phone. Rather a kind of Skype/Google Voice feature that will be added to its mobile clients. On your Facebook app for iphone example, there will be a new icon called "Phone" in addition to the existing News Feed, Inbox, Events, Photos etc.

Re: Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

#83

Post by joe_the_user »

jrockway wrote: post #49
AgentConundrum wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everyone needs to deal with a bank, so in a way it doesn't matter that they all have customer satisfaction issues, since people have to put up with it. If a bank gets really bad, people will switch (I think it'd have to get really bad, since switching seems overly painful for me personally - then again, I'm Canadian and our banks work a bit differently than in the states). If all the banks suck - or at le…

I don't think you realize that most people love Facebook and simply don't understand that there is privacy issue. They log in, see their friends, and play Farmville. A phone will let them do that when they're away from home.

An actual study says different:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366730,00.asp

...slightly miffed at the traction gotten by "you're a geek so your opinion doesn't reflect the average..."

Re: Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

#85

Post by byoung2 »

alex_c wrote: post #80
byoung2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sense does a mobile platform make in that context? Absolutely none that I can see. How does it let them capture and control more data? It opens the possibility for more location-based services, and therefore more location data. I can imagine a mobile "Like" button that when pressed reports your current location a la Foursquare. A location-aware mobile platform would also create some interesting tie-ins with Face…

But Facebook can/does already do all that on existing mobile platforms. Developers are usually more than happy to use tools provided by Facebook in exchange for getting easy social features and access to FB's social graph. Widespread use in 3rd party apps on all mobile platforms will give Facebook a much larger reach, for much less effort, than trying to launch their own phone.

I didn't make it clear in my earlier post, but I was thinking a physical context-aware "Like" button on the phone, like the search button on Android phones.

You're right though, all of these features can be achieved on existing phones, but at a much higher price point. The article suggests that Facebook is targeting the $50 phone market to get the phones into as many hands as possible. That's a different market from the BlackBerry/Android/iPhone/Windows Phone market. It sounds like the KIN strategy.

Re: Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

#86

Post by luminary »

mlinsey wrote: post #13

I'm still waiting for the long-rumored Facebook gmail-killer. Wasn't there a rumor of a Facebook browser at one point too? So I'm not holding my breath on this one-although a Facebook-branded version of Android might make sense.

I know from a FOAF^n that FB-mail is real and they are planning to launch soon.

Re: Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

#87

Post by luminary »

vkdelta wrote: post #10
rudyfink wrote: post #5

Building a phone, the solution to all of the modern software company's problems.

Building a reliable network to support these phones, a solution to all of our connectivity problems.

If you think about it for a second, we still don't have that great mobile-only social app yet. The mobile versions of FB etc. won't cut it if the next 5-10 years are going to be all about mobile.

IMO, FB is extending its vertical with a mobile-only social app AKA the "FB OS."

Re: Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

#88

Post by siglesias »

siglesias wrote: post #52

So the protocol seems to be that strong web platforms want to themselves loosen up their dependence on their OS platforms: browsers, operating systems, etc..., so taken to an extreme the right thing to do is build a hardware platform ? A little extreme, no? It makes for a good plan B, but who thinks that creating yet another competing platform in the mobile space is a good thing for Facebook, at this point ? Right no…

Actually it looks like Android will be basis for Facebook's phone.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/09/19/...

Post reply on HN