Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

robinsloan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 258 posts

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#61

Post by pemulis »

Splines wrote: post #29
stesch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Apple will bring out a cool version in 2020.

How do you make wearing a headpiece cool? I wear glasses and imagine some teeny tiny thing embedded in one of the arms. What could 20/20 people do that would be socially acceptable? Maybe a bluetooth headset looking thing?

Make them exclusive. Only let a handful of people wear them, so that they become a social status symbol. Make them so rare that people share photos of them "in the wild" like they were pictures of celebrities. The early announcement and slow public roll-out are necessary for pragmatic reasons -- you can't test Glass in the real world if you're trying to keep it secret -- but I think it's also a brilliant marketing strategy. Right now the only people who have worn them are high-level Google folks and a handful of Friends of Google. They're living in the future, and we're living in the past. Exclusivity breeds desire. I think that's the general idea.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#63

Post by dkarl »

Facebook as a photo sharing app is a fascinating example of the service being generic and the context for the service being the main focus of competition. A bar sells drinks, but providing a competitive lineup of drinks is much easier than providing a competitive context in which to consume them. Coffee shops sell coffee and wifi, but they compete against each other as contexts within which to consume coffee and wifi. As a photo sharing app, what distinguishes Facebook from its competitors is the context it provides.

The context is nothing by itself, of course, and this is what is rarely mentioned about social networking. A bar without drinks would be dry and boring: a Boys and Girls Club for adults. Similarly, the essential, defining factor of social networking -- the network, the web of connections between people -- is lame and reductive by itself. But it's the perfect context in which to share photos.

Social networking is also a good context for non one-on-one communication. (For one-on-one communication, it offers nothing except a convenient way to initiate a conversation with other Facebook users, a small advantage that can't make up for the fact that it isn't as universal as e-mail or texting.)

I suspect the growth of Facebook as measured by users and usage will depend on discovering other services for which social networking is the perfect context.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#64

Post by InclinedPlane »

Two things:

Both facebook and google are playing catchup on social. Facebook with monetization, google with popularity. This leaves them wide open to disruption from companies that nail the fundamentals from the get go and bring significant value-add to the table.

Second, both companies view users like cattle. Just headcount to convert to dollars.

Overall my hunch is that there's a 50/50 chance that neither google nor faceebook will be king of social in 2020. There's a lot of potential for disruption right now and both of these companies are so focused on each other I doubt they'd even notice a successful upstart until it was too late. The real risk to both, I think, is small companies which don't have billion dollar obligations on their backs already.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#65

Post by ajross »

taligent wrote: post #46
ajross wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of truth to this (though I'm generally a big skeptic when people talk about "research" in the abstract; and I remain genunienly "WTF are they thinking!?" about Glass). Google tries stuff, fails a lot, and stumbles on as many successes as they engineer. Facebook has executed really well on their core stuff, but... what else? I mean, they've been on a huge hiring binge now for four years. What do they hav…

Being able to connect with people from around the world and share content is not a big waste to society.

But they were connecting people years ago. Facebook, from the perspective of their core features, has gotten only incrementally better over the last 5-6 years. And in doing so they've sucked up a huge chunk of talent.

Google over the same period has produced a huge amount of stuff, some of it (gmail, android) wildly successful. Hell, Google has even cloned facebook itself (and from a technical perspective, arguably, done it better) in that time period. And they've done it with what seems to be a very comparable talent pool. So from that perspective, yes, Facebook's engineering employees are wasted.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#66

Post by toemetoch »

antidaily wrote: post #19
gcb wrote: post #12

Glass will be google's newton pad. a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten. With a chance of a decade later becoming a game changer.

Agreed. Meanwhile, they've ruined Picasa with G+.

Odd that you'd state that. My flickr-feed is dwindling because photographers are moving to Google+ for picasa's quality service.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#67

Post by ajross »

51Cards wrote: post #51
ajross wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of truth to this (though I'm generally a big skeptic when people talk about "research" in the abstract; and I remain genunienly "WTF are they thinking!?" about Glass). Google tries stuff, fails a lot, and stumbles on as many successes as they engineer. Facebook has executed really well on their core stuff, but... what else? I mean, they've been on a huge hiring binge now for four years. What do they hav…

The one little thought I would add to that is that when Google first started working on a self driving car everyone went "WTF is a search company doing..". Now, X years later... it's a different story. People have started to really think about self-driving vehicles and autonomous travel. I don't see Glass at this point... but I didn't see practical self driving cars 6 years ago either, let alone states licensing them…

Oh, I'm willing to be surprised. And I'm willing to give Google a lot more benefit of the doubt than I am most entities at being able to execute on this stuff. But still... Glass? Seriously?

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#68

Post by drostie »

excuse-me wrote: post #45

"Imagine actors and athletes doing what they do today on Twitter—sharing their adventures from a first-person POV—except doing it with Glass." Imagine having to click on a dozen copyright notices and pay for each image you see on Google/Facebook because the image they just took is owned by $ACTOR in europe, but $STUDIO in USA and $AGENCY in Japan but a blank page because Facebook doesn't have a right to use it in Can…

That's pretty much true, distribution for content will be a nightmare -- but that's due to the content-distributors being crazy and not so much due to the device being crazy.

So, like, just to be totally clear, the business which doesn't have this problem with videos is porn. I don't know how interested they are in Project Glass in particular, but if Project Glass becomes a way to shoot amateur porn, you can bet that there will be web sites which cater to it. Distribution rights problems will not be a main concern because it's just not a general concern in that industry -- at least, it doesn't get in the way of the day-to-day transmission of the vast amounts of data.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#69

Post by jack-r-abbit »

swalsh wrote: post #49
gcb wrote: post #12

Glass will be google's newton pad. a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten. With a chance of a decade later becoming a game changer.

Sir I challenge you to a bet, $100 to our respective favorite charities. In my opinion Google Glass is set to be a game changer from the start. I wager that when google glass is launched, it will be a cultural icon no more than 1.5 years later. It's clear WHY google needs glass. Owning the channel between my eyes and the world is a huge potential pot of money. Targeted ads have a lot of potential to disrupt the ad sp…

I was thinking the same thing. I think one of the biggest issues with the Newton was timing. We are a different people now than then. The timing is right. If they don't mess it up with weird looking hardware, then it will probably be a success.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#70

Post by gcb »

swalsh wrote: post #49
gcb wrote: post #12

Glass will be google's newton pad. a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten. With a chance of a decade later becoming a game changer.

Sir I challenge you to a bet, $100 to our respective favorite charities. In my opinion Google Glass is set to be a game changer from the start. I wager that when google glass is launched, it will be a cultural icon no more than 1.5 years later. It's clear WHY google needs glass. Owning the channel between my eyes and the world is a huge potential pot of money. Targeted ads have a lot of potential to disrupt the ad sp…

1. i don't believe in paying third party charity

2. you think all that for the same reason I also think all that: Wishful thinking... but deep inside i can see the truth. we are the hippies-yuppies who will buy it :)

put yourself on the shoes of people hearing about the newton back then: handwriting recognition!! how wouldn't want that instead of a 3x4 phone keyboard? Turned out 99.9% prefered T9. it's all the same. we are thinking as if the implementation and day-to-day use would be perfect on such a new concept on the first try. well, odds are it wont. but in one year can get back to it and see if my money goes to one of your charities or if your money will buy me something shinny (that's one bet i'd like to lose...)

Post reply on HN