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Introducing Facebook Camera

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Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#61
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.

Because it ropes in people like me who don't want the native Facebook app on their phone, but want to keep in touch with friends who use Facebook messages.

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#62
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.

but what's weird is that the Facebook app also does both of these things already, just not quite as well. It's especially weird with Messenger because I think both apps can get push notifications.

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#64
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.

Because Facebook wants to be the platform and not the app. At some point we'll realize that Zuckerburg was out to replace Windows not Myspace

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#65
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's somewhat in following with the Unix paradigm; do one thing, do it well.

Not always. Regarding core Unix commands yes (like 'ls', 'cat') but look for example at 'git' which is a real beast.

git is just a facade for the git-* commands.

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#66
Isn't the point here that instead of creating hardware and developing the software on top of it, Facebook is creating its own mobile offering in reverse? Building all of the software and setting the hardware component as priority two.

Facebook Messenger's new read/delivered functionality is much like BBM or iMessage. They just unveiled their app store. Now a Photos app.

Once the core apps are done and everybody who has an iOS or Android phone already uses them and enjoys them, convincing people to jump to an actual Facebook phone may not be a stretch.

Not saying that will ultimately happen, but it seems like this approach is keeping that door wide open.

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#67
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's somewhat in following with the Unix paradigm; do one thing, do it well.

Not always. Regarding core Unix commands yes (like 'ls', 'cat') but look for example at 'git' which is a real beast.

Not to veer too far from the main discussion, but 'git' isn't just some giant monolithic binary. The 'git' command is a wrapper around a bunch of different, relatively modular binaries. They each even have their own man page. (e.g. 'git push' maps to 'git-push'). Each is just a unique action that can be applied to a common data structure (the git repository).

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#68
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.

We call the unix paradigm now the iOS paradigm?

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#69
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's somewhat in following with the Unix paradigm; do one thing, do it well.

Not always. Regarding core Unix commands yes (like 'ls', 'cat') but look for example at 'git' which is a real beast.

Look closer at git, and you'll see that it's actually a collection of smaller programs (each of the git commands is made as a separate executable before being combined into git)

Re: Introducing Facebook Camera

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We call the unix paradigm now the iOS paradigm?

The Unix paradigm is more about even smaller composable tools.
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