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Facebook's Three New Products

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Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#111
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downloading .exe files to Linux computers seems to be a very Microsofty thing to do.

I SERIOUSLY doubt MS was giving them architectural guidance on how to make this work. Probably would have more to do with the architectural experience of the devs.

I wasn't suggesting that MS told them to do that. To my knowledge, this first time that Facebook has left the Web and launched a feature only available to specific OSs by way of desktop applications.

Remember that this video chat is not a web page. It's a Microsoft (and Apple? I don't know) desktop application that integrates into their web page.

I'm suggesting that Facebook is showing their alliance to Microsoft by ignoring some other OSs and launching Microsoft-powered features. If you include video chat as an integral part of Facebook, then you can no longer call Facebook a web site.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think that attitude will allow them to maintain their dominance?

IMO it won't be their tech or attitude that will bring an eventual end to their dominance but shear fashion. Trend following. If Google position themselves and look cool and capture the "cool kids" then FB will lose out to them (to some extent). FB is already getting a little taint, it's run a good innings in internet time. Whichever, G+ or FB, manages to capture the buzz of "hangouts with famous people" will probabl…

This.

I sent my wife the intro link for Google+ when they launched and she couldn't even be bothered to check it out. Why? Because everyone she knows is on facebook.

If her friends move, then she'll move. It'll probably annoy her to have to switch too.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video features built into gchat have served my needs perfectly. Between hangouts & youtube video sharing, I think google+ is out-shining them at this point in time.

The video features built into gchat have served my needs perfectly 1) The average person knows more people on Facebook, then people with a Gmail account. 2) You, and your other geeky friends live in Gmail. The rest of the world lives inside Facebook.

So what is your point exactly? That the only reason people will stay on Facebook is that they already are on Facebook? By this logic they never would have gotten on Facebook in the first place, because Facebook started out empty, and everybody already was somwhere else, say MySpace, and ICQ/AIM/YIM/MSN before that.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I SERIOUSLY doubt MS was giving them architectural guidance on how to make this work. Probably would have more to do with the architectural experience of the devs.

I wasn't suggesting that MS told them to do that. To my knowledge, this first time that Facebook has left the Web and launched a feature only available to specific OSs by way of desktop applications. Remember that this video chat is not a web page. It's a Microsoft (and Apple? I don't know) desktop application that integrates into their web page. I'm suggesting that Facebook is showing their alliance to Microsoft by…

Thanks. That wasn't clear from your earlier post (and I didn't know that this was a desktop app either).

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't suggesting that MS told them to do that. To my knowledge, this first time that Facebook has left the Web and launched a feature only available to specific OSs by way of desktop applications. Remember that this video chat is not a web page. It's a Microsoft (and Apple? I don't know) desktop application that integrates into their web page. I'm suggesting that Facebook is showing their alliance to Microsoft by…

Thanks. That wasn't clear from your earlier post (and I didn't know that this was a desktop app either).

:) To be fair, G+'s Hangouts is also currently a desktop app (requires the Gtalk plugin I think). I suspect Google will move away from that and go towards a full web page. We'll see. This is all so exciting.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video features built into gchat have served my needs perfectly. Between hangouts & youtube video sharing, I think google+ is out-shining them at this point in time.

The video features built into gchat have served my needs perfectly 1) The average person knows more people on Facebook, then people with a Gmail account. 2) You, and your other geeky friends live in Gmail. The rest of the world lives inside Facebook.

I'm not convinced. I caught up with a couple of friends recently, not the geekiest crowd, but all but one have Android devices. The Android owners now live in googleverse, and none are on Facebook more often than they check their gmail. I also know a fair amount of people who check Facebook once a week or rarer. My aunt, who is just discovering that she can forward me funny pictures via email, contacts me from her Yahoo account. The rest of the world? Not quite.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#117
OK, the question I have here is about monetization. Who will get more money from this deal - Facebook or Microsoft/Skype and how? Skype has not been profitable for so many years (although they charge for phone calls and have ads), and I don't see this moving it closer to the goal. Also, if FB allows group video-chat for free why would I pay Skype the subscription fee - I will just call from Facebook.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#118
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video features built into gchat have served my needs perfectly 1) The average person knows more people on Facebook, then people with a Gmail account. 2) You, and your other geeky friends live in Gmail. The rest of the world lives inside Facebook.

The rest of the world lives inside Facebook. For now. To me, there's exactly one compelling thing about Facebook: It illustrated that normal humans will join and use a social network. Beyond that, I don't see any reason why their adoption patterns will differ from those we've already seen with other humans on other "social" web properties (Hi Livejournal/Facethejury/Friendster et al!). Which is to say, the enthusiast…

Livejournal/Facethejury/Friendster

These never reached the audience Facebook has today. 750M users and growing, FB won social networking. Game over.

It's not as if nerds who have SRS PRIVACY CONCERNZ and talk about things like data portability are the only people growing weary of Facebook.

I guarantee you this is a very tiny portion. I live with someone who spends lots of time on FB ("Oh, look at this pictures from XYZ"). They don't even know there is a discussion going around privacy.

To assume that Facebook will remain the social network of note just because they're Facebook, or just because they got there first (sort of) seems naïve.

It will just as Microsoft has dominated the OS space. Another desktop OS is not going to kill MSFT, but maybe mobile will. Same for FB, it will take a different experience to get people to stop spending as much time on the site. Something like Instagram or With with a few added features/mechanisms.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#119
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people's social graphs are too small (130 people) to be useful. Well we will use an extended social-graph, you might say, but if you are extending the social-graph, why not include the entire internet? Why would my social-graph contain better (more accurate and relevant) information about doing a thing than doathing.com? The social-graph is a reduced set of the internet. It is probably easier to search, but how…

I think you are mistaking how to integrate the social graph into search. You don't do it by exclusively searching within the social graph, you use the social graph to augment your traditional search. The best way for me to show you what I mean is for you to look at the attempts blekko is making. Create an account, and connect your facebook profile, wait 1 hour, and then do searches with "/likes" appended. You'll stil…

Bing has a similar feature and one that might have more life given MSFT's relationship status with Facebook.
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