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

Facebook buys Parse

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 288 posts

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#51

Post by gcb0 »

cletus wrote: post #12

This doesn't surprise me in that it seems like a natural fit for Facebook, who has a Mobile Problem [tm]. As much as people fear Facebook becoming The Internet (in the AOL sense), Facebook is actually really late to this party. Apple has a mobile OS, a content and payments ecosystem and a deeply integrated set of products. Google has a mobile OS, GMail, a search engine, a burgeoning content ecosystem and its Maps/loc…

you laid down an excellent foundation and then just dismissed it on the conclusion.

why does buying parse makes perfect sense for facebook? you already mentioned they are doing fine there, with their little piece of the internet in their app. why would they want to support 60,000 apps that does other things out of their little corner?

....oh, will they bait and switch them? all 60,000 apps forced to login via facebook only next month?

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#52

Post by rdouble »

lawtguy wrote: post #45
mseebach wrote: post #19

I'm not a mobile developer, which is probably why I struggle to see what Parse does? What does Parse give me (if I was a mobile dev) that I don't get from Heroku+libs? Are push notifications and identity so painful to deal with that there's a business in creating a full platform to deal with it?

There's definitely a bit hand holding with Parse that makes it attractive to a inexperienced developer. If opening a socket and sending and receiving binary data makes you nervous, then Parse is going to make you feel a whole lot more comfortable. But the real win with Parse is that for small to medium sized apps, you don't need to manage your own servers. Apple takes care of delivery, Parse takes care of the backend…

Parse is even more attractive to the experienced developer. After 15 years of backend bullshit, I was pretty stoked to find something which could make almost all of that pain and suffering finally go away.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#53

Post by pifflesnort »

rdouble wrote: post #26
mseebach wrote: post #19

I'm not a mobile developer, which is probably why I struggle to see what Parse does? What does Parse give me (if I was a mobile dev) that I don't get from Heroku+libs? Are push notifications and identity so painful to deal with that there's a business in creating a full platform to deal with it?

Are push notifications and identity so painful to deal with that there's a business in creating a full platform to deal with it? Yes. (at least on iOS, not sure about Android or Win) Parse has an iOS data object that syncs properly, whereas there is no evidence that any developer has ever gotten Apple's own iCloud + Core Data to sync properly at the record level. Parse is cross platform so you can easily get the same…

> Yes. (at least on iOS, not sure about Android or Win)

er, what? It's an afternoon's worth of work, involving basic PKI and TCP sockets. I know it's an afternoon's worth of work, because I've done it in an afternoon.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#54

Post by smrtinsert »

Apocryphon wrote: post #20
cletus wrote: post #12

This doesn't surprise me in that it seems like a natural fit for Facebook, who has a Mobile Problem [tm]. As much as people fear Facebook becoming The Internet (in the AOL sense), Facebook is actually really late to this party. Apple has a mobile OS, a content and payments ecosystem and a deeply integrated set of products. Google has a mobile OS, GMail, a search engine, a burgeoning content ecosystem and its Maps/loc…

Ironic that Google seems to have a social networking problem, while Facebook has a mobile problem.

Facebook has a mindshare problem. I no longer consider it a driving force in my social interaction and I'm of the older generation. The younger generation seems to have abandoned it already. It's now a deposit for the occasional family photo and lately seems to be full of chain spam.

When you think back to the history of social networks (AOL, Compuserv, Friendster, Myspace) these things don't have a great half-life.

They need to reinvent themselves and fast, and extending their reach isn't as much the issue as reasserting relevance through great content.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#55

Post by csmajorfive »

abijlani wrote: post #9

I'm a big fan of Parse even though I prefer Firebase as a developer. This is sad news because I think they were one company that was executing really well and would have been successful on their own. Even though Facebook and Parse say they are not going to shutdown the service we all know how that story goes.

They may not be the majority but there are acquisitions where a service keeps running. This is one of them.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#56

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

csmajorfive wrote: post #27
pxlpshr wrote: post #3

Congrats to the Parse team!! As a customer, not necessarily happy about this. I don't like Doug Purdy's quote, "We don’t intend to change this." We use Parse and love it. I really hope they maintain some autonomy as to not get sucked into the "move fast and break things" or "documentation? f--k it." Nonetheless, probably makes a lot of sense for Facebook's mobile strategy.

Our focus on quality in product and documentation got us to this point so we're not going to change that strategy anytime soon :-)

You might believe that, but the question is: will you have a choice?

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#58

Post by smrtinsert »

sinzone wrote: post #6

Soon FB will monetize most of their APIs too. Example: Real-time access to all its social stream is going to be a paid usage API.

soon we will be able to mine the realtime social space for memes and meme likes. sounds valuable.

facebook hasn't delivered. years ago i was sold on this service - i envisioned a future where i could find a doctor via my social network, or collaborate with a team member from within facebook on a document, or play a realtime game with a friend.

the only thing it seems to be good at is spreading wall spam and obscuring content. lets start with the ability to review wall posts by date instead of the endless scroll of stupidity.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#59

Post by iambpentameter »

cletus wrote: post #12

This doesn't surprise me in that it seems like a natural fit for Facebook, who has a Mobile Problem [tm]. As much as people fear Facebook becoming The Internet (in the AOL sense), Facebook is actually really late to this party. Apple has a mobile OS, a content and payments ecosystem and a deeply integrated set of products. Google has a mobile OS, GMail, a search engine, a burgeoning content ecosystem and its Maps/loc…

Facebook bought strobe in 2011 which was also an "app delivery network" and did nothing with it. Why pick up another one?
Post reply on HN