Introducing Facebook Camera • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#31

Post by nc » Thu, May 24, 2012, 5:40 PM UTC

pinko wrote: post #18

timjahn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For photos specifically, it takes me an average of 10 minutes to upload a photo on their iPhone app if I'm on my cell connection. The 10 minutes consists of a combination of upload attempts, fails, freezes, etc. It's just a horrible experience. If this new standalone photo app will let me easily, quickly, flawlessly upload photos to Facebook, then hell yeah.

This doesn't make any sense to me. Why not just fix the main app?

They started off with that approach, the app had a pseudo home screen with quick access to different functions.

Ultimately I think it boils down to what you think of when you want to do take a photo or send a message which maps to (Facebook Camera, Facebook Messenger) more naturally than just Facebook.

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#32

Post by kurtvarner » Thu, May 24, 2012, 5:42 PM UTC

Bad news for Batch from Dailybooth (YC S09). They focus on uploading photos in batches.

http://batch.com/

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#33

Post by Greg12x » Thu, May 24, 2012, 5:42 PM UTC

Wow. Do we really need this?

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#34

Post by dominostars » Thu, May 24, 2012, 5:42 PM UTC

JCB_K wrote: post #8

I really don't see the point of separate apps. The main Facebook app, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Photos...what's next? Anyone who can enlighten me why this would be a good strategy? Seems like unnecessary fragmentation to me.

It's the iOS paradigm to make feature simple standalone apps. Why do you think Apple has both a "Photo Album" and "Camera" app? And both a "Phone" and "Contacts" app?

Many users upload photos to Facebook, so there's a huge incentive to make an app that makes it simple to do this. Even if the main Facebook app has feature parity with FBPhotos, it's still going to come with all of the cruft.

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#35

Post by flyt » Thu, May 24, 2012, 5:42 PM UTC

briansugar wrote: post #24

is this run on a windows box?? .aspx

Facebook's press site is operated by NASDAQ.

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#36

Post by templaedhel » Thu, May 24, 2012, 5:42 PM UTC

UX bug that is actually fairly glaring when it comes down to it:

I searched for "Facebook Camera" in the app store, but because it is so new, it is not there (ok, seems normal)

I went to the site and clicked "Text link to my phone", phone number already filled out, text went through fine (so far so good)

Clicked on the link, but facebooks mobile detection caught it before the redirect happened, didn't know how to handle the url, and redirected me to the facebook homepage instead (I was logged in, so this was my news feed page).

This leaves me with basically no way it install the app unless I wait for it to be indexed in the app store, or download to my computer, both of which I do not want to do.

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#37

Post by newhouseb » Thu, May 24, 2012, 5:43 PM UTC

JCB_K wrote: post #8

I really don't see the point of separate apps. The main Facebook app, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Photos...what's next? Anyone who can enlighten me why this would be a good strategy? Seems like unnecessary fragmentation to me.

When you try to design a mobile app you quickly realize how little real-estate you have on a phone to build a complex interface. Facebook is a ridiculously complex app when you think about all of the things you can do.

Facebook might be working under the assumption that they can make cleaner, simpler products by breaking them out into smaller functional units all backed by the same social graph.

Or this could be a relic of something the Sofa team was working on before the Instagram deal.

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#38

Post by scorpion032 » Thu, May 24, 2012, 5:43 PM UTC

pinko wrote: post #18

timjahn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For photos specifically, it takes me an average of 10 minutes to upload a photo on their iPhone app if I'm on my cell connection. The 10 minutes consists of a combination of upload attempts, fails, freezes, etc. It's just a horrible experience. If this new standalone photo app will let me easily, quickly, flawlessly upload photos to Facebook, then hell yeah.

This doesn't make any sense to me. Why not just fix the main app?

The main app is optimized for reading your timeline. Fetches notifications, friends, messages etc.

It is hard to optimize for different tasks at once, while I'd also argue it would be possible to strike a good balance. But I think it is a pragmatic decision rather than try to achieve that perfect balance, and let several instagrams take over, do the right thing for each task and a year down the line knowing usage patterns, with much better hardware, you can think about a consolidated app.

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#39

Post by slantyyz » Thu, May 24, 2012, 5:44 PM UTC

sev wrote: post #19

Since this app seems to directly "compete" with the Instagram app, I wonder if their goal is to get rid of Instagram completely.

I've always thought that the goal was to slowly let Instagram die in the same way Flickr has.

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#40

Post by Kylekramer » Thu, May 24, 2012, 5:45 PM UTC

patrickod wrote: post #22

They split Camera and Messenger out into their own separate applications recently on Android. This was quickly reverted seemingly due to really bad reception. It puzzles me why they're repeating this

The problem with the Android version is you got three apps in your app drawer when installing the main Facebook app. That was confusing, spammy, and impossible for the user to opt out of if they wanted to use Facebook on Android at all. A separate app is just confusing (unless you are coming from Facebook's perspective), so it is an improvement. I am positive there will be a separate Android app in the coming weeks.