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Facebook's Three New Products

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Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#51

Post by phillco »

pstack wrote: post #10

I don't see any products, there. I just see a couple of lame features. Skype and group chat. Skype already does Skype, so I'm not sure why I'd load up Facebook just so I could skype through a webpage, instead. My IM client has done group chat for years, so I'm not sure why I'd load up facebook just so I could chat with a group of those people, either. This kind of falls in line with my confusion as to why people ruin…

When I was in high school, almost everyone used AIM. Then Facebook Chat came out and practically crushed it. Why? It wasn't better (it was far, far, worse, actually — you couldn't chat with somebody without one of you complaining about it), but everyone was there. It became the defacto way to reach people. It was successful for the same reason Facebook was successful.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#52

Post by canistr »

togasystems wrote: post #45
Apocryphon wrote: post #26

Looks like video chat is the hot new battleground again. Facebook Skype vs. video GChat vs. Apple FaceTime/iChat/iMessage vs. Microsoft Skype(?)

Microsoft Skype just partnered with Facebook .... and Twitter will use Apple FaceTime ...

It should also be noted that Facebook chat works within Windows Live Messenger 2011 and you receive Facebook notifications (or birthday updates) from within Hotmail. So Microsoft has been working with Facebook for some time now.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#53

Post by brudgers »

ssclafani wrote: post #12
michaelchisari wrote: post #2

Given their social networking dominance, their swimming pools filled with vc money, and the top engineers working for them, does anyone else feel like Facebook are underachievers? Considering they had to have known about G+ for a while before it launched, you would think they would really hit something out of the park in terms of competitive features. These are all pretty lackluster, imho.

Facebook doesn't need to have competitive features they only need to have comparative features. Google+ has video chat, now Facebook does. It doesn't matter that Hangout is better. People don't switch social networks based on any single feature.

>"It doesn't matter that Hangout is better."

From a technical implementation perspective maybe Hangout is better. However, from a social networking perspective 3/4 of a billion Skype users is clearly better. And from a marketing perspective, giving Skype users worldwide a reason to choose Facebook over competing products is brilliant.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#54

Post by [deleted] »

nkassis wrote: post #47
smackfu wrote: post #34

For those drawing comparisons: Facebook has 500 million users. How many does Google+ have?

That's not even worth wasting time at answering. Look Google doing a great job of rebranding it's services. Google already had video chat for a while now. If you have gmail you have video chat. I don't get why facebook is just getting around to doing it. And google didn't need skype to do it.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#55

Post by phillco »

michaelchisari wrote: post #2

Given their social networking dominance, their swimming pools filled with vc money, and the top engineers working for them, does anyone else feel like Facebook are underachievers? Considering they had to have known about G+ for a while before it launched, you would think they would really hit something out of the park in terms of competitive features. These are all pretty lackluster, imho.

Facebook's quality seems to be directly linked to their need to acquire users. When they started out they were excellent — I remember being very impressed that a social network could be this nice. Now that everyone uses them, they have no hunger for quality.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#56

Post by clarkbox »

MartinCron wrote: post #50
michaelchisari wrote: post #2

Given their social networking dominance, their swimming pools filled with vc money, and the top engineers working for them, does anyone else feel like Facebook are underachievers? Considering they had to have known about G+ for a while before it launched, you would think they would really hit something out of the park in terms of competitive features. These are all pretty lackluster, imho.

Facebook just works pretty darn well, though. The application is almost always responsive, it's extremely polished, and it's always getting a bit stronger in what it offers. If that's underachieving, sign me up.

"Facebook just works pretty darn well" i guess you have never interacted with their platform/api?

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#57

Post by vannevar »

ssclafani wrote: post #12
michaelchisari wrote: post #2

Given their social networking dominance, their swimming pools filled with vc money, and the top engineers working for them, does anyone else feel like Facebook are underachievers? Considering they had to have known about G+ for a while before it launched, you would think they would really hit something out of the park in terms of competitive features. These are all pretty lackluster, imho.

Facebook doesn't need to have competitive features they only need to have comparative features. Google+ has video chat, now Facebook does. It doesn't matter that Hangout is better. People don't switch social networks based on any single feature.

Facebook didn't have to be very good when their main competitors were MySpace and Friendster, two poster children for incompetence who blew early leads in quick succession while at times appearing to be run by circus clowns. Fortunately for Facebook success is relative: for a site whose primary purpose is to manage your social network it's been sorely lacking in any credible tools to manage social networks. Facebook is basically Geocities with comments and photo-sharing. Now Zuck and Co are going to actually have to put some thought into it.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#58

Post by Newky »

nubela wrote: post #49
Newky wrote: post #44

Also, I went with the setup, and not only did facebook not support linux, it doesn't detect I'm on a linux system and started to download a .EXE file! Feeling some pressure from google + ?

same thing. i thought that was complete fail on their end. a .exe? come on.

Not even as much as a "Sorry your operating system isn't supported at this stage!" watch this space type message, just an in your face EXE download!

Used to being a second class citizen but most sites of recent years have a recognizer at the very least!

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#59

Post by Apocryphon »

togasystems wrote: post #45
Apocryphon wrote: post #26

Looks like video chat is the hot new battleground again. Facebook Skype vs. video GChat vs. Apple FaceTime/iChat/iMessage vs. Microsoft Skype(?)

Microsoft Skype just partnered with Facebook .... and Twitter will use Apple FaceTime ...

They're forming tagteams? I wonder if any other partnerships will emerge.

I also said Microsoft Skype to distinguish it from FB- didn't know that FB and MS have been collaborating. But on second thought, it really is going to be Microsoft Skype from here on out. Or rather, 2012 Microsoft Skype Home Edition 7 with .NET Windows Live integration.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#60

Post by wccrawford »

kin wrote: post #38
wccrawford wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G+ launched with Group video chat (in the Hangouts feature) with no fanfare at all, as it if was nothing. FB's announcement today has spent a lot of time talking about how much work it was to implement... It's got to be a huge kick in the pants to them. I kind of feel bad for them.

Hangouts is group video. Huddle is group text chats, which for some reason is mobile only and has no web interface. No one uses it 'cause not everyone has an Android device.

I meant group video chat. Thanks for catching that. I've updated my comment.
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