The Dangers of Relying on Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: The Dangers of Relying on Facebook

#21

Post by dtby » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 1:20 PM UTC

revetkn wrote: post #7

Facebook API client author here ( http://restfb.com ). In my experience, you've got to be extremely careful/defensive when relying on anything from FB. Undocumented breaking changes are commonplace and no one on the FB side seems to care very much, possibly because they've got a de facto monopoly for the time being, or possibly because community notifications/documentation/etc. are boring next to sexy engineering pro…

possibly because they've got a de facto monopoly for the time being

On what?

Re: The Dangers of Relying on Facebook

#22

Post by quanticle » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 1:20 PM UTC

ignifero wrote: post #17

dansingerman wrote: post #3

As a business, it will always be a bad idea to completely rely on another entity outside your control, whose interests are very likely to be misaligned to yours. By all means leverage, Facebook (and Twitter and others) sign on and APIs, but if you are building a business on a single one of those, you are completely at the mercy of their whims, any incompetency, and changes in business practices.

You do not rely on other companies only when you rely on open standards. Web development is an example (although you indirectly rely on Google for example). All kinds of apps usually rely on an underlying commercial technology ( windows development, osx development, ios development) whose actions are outside your control.

The Facebook app and Windows app scenarios are not comparable. Microsoft knows that the only reason Windows has succeeded as much as it has is because of its vast and deep pool of applications. As such, there is an incentive for Microsoft to allow a relative amount of freedom when developing Windows applications. Indeed, a bare operating system is quite useless without applications to run on it.

Facebook, on the other hand, became successful without any of the additional third party applications that use it as a platform today. A "bare" Facebook, without any third party apps, retains quite a lot in the way of functionality. This means that Facebook's interests are much less aligned with yours than Microsoft's.

Re: The Dangers of Relying on Facebook

#23

Post by quanticle » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 1:21 PM UTC

jaysonelliot wrote: post #9

It seems that neither Apple nor Facebook is particularly attentive to the developers who build on their platforms once the app is released. Curious models for companies whose success is largely due to the developer community.

I don't know about Apple, but I don't think that Facebook's success is due to the developer community. I would argue that the arrow of causation is reversed in Facebook's case - developers are interested in Facebook because of its market share, rather than the reverse.

Re: The Dangers of Relying on Facebook

#24

Post by quanticle » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 1:28 PM UTC

dtby wrote: post #21

revetkn wrote: post #7

Facebook API client author here ( http://restfb.com ). In my experience, you've got to be extremely careful/defensive when relying on anything from FB. Undocumented breaking changes are commonplace and no one on the FB side seems to care very much, possibly because they've got a de facto monopoly for the time being, or possibly because community notifications/documentation/etc. are boring next to sexy engineering pro…

possibly because they've got a de facto monopoly for the time being On what?

On "social networking", I guess. Just like with instant messaging, Facebook has a monopoly on social networking thanks to network effects. User join Facebook because all of their friends are already on Facebook, which leads to even more users joining Facebook.

Its the same scenario we saw with AIM in the instant messaging space. Lots of people were already on AIM (thanks to having AOL accounts), making AIM an attractive choice for new users. The trend was only broken when the AIM protocol (as well as those of other proprietary chat networks) was broken, allowing multi-protocol chat clients to bridge the gap between networks.

We're already seeing the same thing with social networks. Many clients support both Facebook and Twitter, allowing users to transparently bridge the gap between the two largest social media networks on the Internet.

Re: The Dangers of Relying on Facebook

#25

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 1:54 PM UTC

aaronmarks wrote: post #14

dansingerman wrote: post #3

As a business, it will always be a bad idea to completely rely on another entity outside your control, whose interests are very likely to be misaligned to yours. By all means leverage, Facebook (and Twitter and others) sign on and APIs, but if you are building a business on a single one of those, you are completely at the mercy of their whims, any incompetency, and changes in business practices.

This seems like a really valid and important point. Yet companies who do build their entire business on other companies' info / APIS (Think Greplin, Trendrr, Tweetdeck, etc.) still get tons of interest from investors. While it is easy to realize the importance of developing an independent business when commenting on HN, I think the startup community as a whole needs to start displaying this in its actions. Once more…

[deleted]

Re: The Dangers of Relying on Facebook

#26

Post by revetkn » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 2:15 PM UTC

dtby wrote: post #21

revetkn wrote: post #7

Facebook API client author here ( http://restfb.com ). In my experience, you've got to be extremely careful/defensive when relying on anything from FB. Undocumented breaking changes are commonplace and no one on the FB side seems to care very much, possibly because they've got a de facto monopoly for the time being, or possibly because community notifications/documentation/etc. are boring next to sexy engineering pro…

possibly because they've got a de facto monopoly for the time being On what?

Like quanticle said, social networking. You can't say, "fuck this, I'll just integrate with myspace instead" without getting laughed out of the room. Like it or not, Facebook's the only game in town.

Re: The Dangers of Relying on Facebook

#27

Post by alttab » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 2:27 PM UTC

What does Pixamid do that the iphone/facebook android app with integrated camera doesn't do? From what I've deduced Pixamid is a feature of current Facebook clients, not an independent venture in its own right.

This puts them in a similar position as Foursquare or Gowalla - once Facebook introduced places, you saw the stickers on the outside of businesses become "Check-In with Facebook".

Re: The Dangers of Relying on Facebook

#28

Post by dtby » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 2:35 PM UTC

revetkn wrote: post #26

dtby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

possibly because they've got a de facto monopoly for the time being On what?

Like quanticle said, social networking. You can't say, "fuck this, I'll just integrate with myspace instead" without getting laughed out of the room. Like it or not, Facebook's the only game in town.

Like quanticle said, social networking.

My problem is that is not a real thing which can be monopolized. I promise I'm not being (intentionally) obtuse here. I don't understand which piece of an online offering requires Facebook. Maybe an example would help me.

Re: The Dangers of Relying on Facebook

#29

Post by GavinB » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 2:41 PM UTC

dansingerman wrote: post #3

As a business, it will always be a bad idea to completely rely on another entity outside your control, whose interests are very likely to be misaligned to yours. By all means leverage, Facebook (and Twitter and others) sign on and APIs, but if you are building a business on a single one of those, you are completely at the mercy of their whims, any incompetency, and changes in business practices.

There are always risks in business.

Are all the people who have built successful companies that rely on facebook, apple, twitter, google, or other platforms wrong?

The important thing is to understand the risks and account for them. Don't overreact just because having your app suddenly pulled seems more traumatic or less under your control than other failure modes.

Re: The Dangers of Relying on Facebook

#30

Post by bbd37 » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 2:44 PM UTC

alttab wrote: post #27

What does Pixamid do that the iphone/facebook android app with integrated camera doesn't do? From what I've deduced Pixamid is a feature of current Facebook clients, not an independent venture in its own right. This puts them in a similar position as Foursquare or Gowalla - once Facebook introduced places, you saw the stickers on the outside of businesses become "Check-In with Facebook".

Pixamid is similar to Color, in that we instantly share photos with those around you. But Pixamid gives the user more control, allowing them to limit sharing to just friends at the same place.

We also focus on aggregating photos from whatever source we can. Today, when people are together socially and taking photos, those photos end up spread out all over. If a Pixamid user is at a particular place, Pixamid will collect any photos taken at the same place from Pixamid, Foursquare, Facebook and Instagram.

The more nuanced sharing model and the aggregation are not currently features of Facebook clients. From what we have learned, a lot of people are not happy with any existing photo sharing solution, and we hope to provide some of them with a better service.