Facebook's Three New Products • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#121

Post by jdp23 » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 7:30 PM UTC

felideon wrote: post #110

kevindication wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have been one of the few using ICQ and MSN after AIM. ICQ was much earlier in the chronology (we used to play with it when we got bored on IRC) and no one used MSN. :-P

MSN was (is?) pretty popular in Latin America. I had 0 "real life" friends on AIM. My few AIM buddies were people I met in games.

Indeed. I don't know about today, but back in 2006 MSN was as popular as AIM and Yahoo! worldwide and particularly strong in certain areas -- there are some countries where it was even a verb ("I'll MSN you"). But then MS changed the name to "Windows Live Messenger", underinvested, and prioritized search instead. Ah well.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#122

Post by p0ppe » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 7:30 PM UTC

smackfu wrote: post #34

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

Facebook actually has 750 million active users, according to the press conference today. They've also updated their Statistics page to reflect that; https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#123

Post by grecy » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 7:31 PM UTC

felideon wrote: post #110

kevindication wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have been one of the few using ICQ and MSN after AIM. ICQ was much earlier in the chronology (we used to play with it when we got bored on IRC) and no one used MSN. :-P

MSN was (is?) pretty popular in Latin America. I had 0 "real life" friends on AIM. My few AIM buddies were people I met in games.

is. I was just all over Central and South America, and internet cafes were always full of high school kids, every single screen full of MSN chat windows.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#124

Post by jdp23 » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 7:31 PM UTC

joelrunyon wrote: post #83

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.

The presentation seemed a little lackluster. It's like FB + Skype were planning a big surprise and then Google dropped a bigger one with G+ last week and FB/Skype were left standing, shouting "us too!" but with a smaller product + feature set.

great summary, you nailed both the content and the tone

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#125

Post by shoota » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 7:34 PM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #115

kenjackson wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but they at least provide the appropriate plugin for Linux users.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#126

Post by kragen » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 7:35 PM UTC

Well, so now we know why Google+ launched last week.

Doesn't look like they do group videochat?

Group chat is really, really important. But it's what we've always used Facebook for; it was just structured as "comment threads".

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#127

Post by cryptoz » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 7:36 PM UTC

shoota wrote: post #125

cryptoz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) 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.

Yes but they at least provide the appropriate plugin for Linux users.

Yep! I was Hanging Out on Ubuntu with 6 friends on about day 2 of G+. Facebook doesn't even support my OS, so there's absolutely 0 chance I'll use their video chat.

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#128

Post by VuongN » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 7:39 PM UTC

Bringing Your Friends to Bing: Search Now More Social is one of the popular stories. I'm not sure if I trust that list of "popular stories"

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#129

Post by mun2mun » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 7:41 PM UTC

Does it mean that skype just got 750 million p2p node?

Re: Facebook's Three New Products

#130

Post by masterzora » Wed, Jul 06, 2011, 7:42 PM UTC

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.

I'm curious as to what set of the features you use, because I seem to have chosen a set with the opposite experience: responsiveness is often spotty, polish is lacking, and the offering seems to be getting weaker if anything. That said, maybe the new offerings will help fix some of that, but I'm not particularly sanguine.