I hope the platform can stay as independent as it is. I just recently won a Google arranged hackathon in Munich (and through it a fully paid trip and tickets to I/O - yay!) and it would have been totally impossible to do this without parse. A few lines of code and I was able to setup a complex messaging system between a native Android app and a server visualisation.
It sets you free from so many worries and really makes any mobile app that talks to a server so much easier to develop. It's the single most useful service I have ever used in this space.
Facebook buys Parse
81–90 of 288 posts
Re: Facebook buys Parse
#82Damn. I was going to use Parse for my app, but now I will not. What are some of the alternatives out there?
Azure Mobile Services - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/
Re: Facebook buys Parse
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 faceboo…
straight off the parse blog: > Q: Will Parse apps have to use Facebook functionality? No.
Unfortunately that could change in a moment's notice in the future :(
Re: Facebook buys Parse
#84Everyone wants a piece of mobile dev tools. Think Twitter + Crashlytics and now Facebook + Parse. As some might remember, Facebook at one point only had Heroku as their core Dev partner [1], so it only makes sense for Facebook to get in this space.
Re: Facebook buys Parse
#85This 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 faceboo…
I think Facebook is making a play to take over Android. Buying parse gives them an app platform and something like iCloud but it works.
Re: Facebook buys Parse
#86This 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…
I always thought that Parse would be an excellent acquisition target for Azure, since the cross-platform support of Azure for mobile platforms is done so clumsily.
Re: Facebook buys Parse
#87/me immediately downloads dumps of all his app's data.
But seriously, what will this mean for my user data? Privacy, portability, etc.
What alternatives are there that compare in quality? Don't tell me HeliOS, because that's iOS-only (I use Parse for it's web apps mostly).
Re: Facebook buys Parse
#88Congrats 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.
This is a big & exciting step forwards for Facebook and what we can offer developers.
(And we're working hard on all your concerns too...)
Re: Facebook buys Parse
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
I've noticed this, too. I still log into FB often. But, my FB feed is dead. Only 1 of my 100+ friends still posts something regularly (every week or two). At first, I just thought people created filters that didn't include me (when that feature was introduced). But, they're just not using FB anymore. Thinking back, I almost totally stopped posting stuff around the time they did because the site just began to feel creepy (foto tagging, etc) and started feeling like a mostly empty room at the end of a party. FB feels today like lj and myspace felt right before they died.
I've been keeping an eye out for the next social site where everyone is going. But, there doesn't seem to be one this time. I think social might finally be over.
Re: Facebook buys Parse
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google should've bought Facebook years ago, when it was still small.
Meh, that never works. Remember Yahoo also offered $1B for Google in 2002 or so. Google had a social network that launched in 2004 as well, at almost the exact same time as Facebook -- Orkut.
It sometimes works, it's just that you never hear about it when it does because you forget all about the small company and it's just seen as a big company's hot new product.
Recall that Google bought Android and YouTube when they were small, Google bought Where2 (Google Maps) when it was small, Google bought Writely (Google Docs) when it was small, Yahoo bought Flickr when it was small, Google bought MetaWeb (those knowledge cards on the right of the search result page) and ITA (flight search) when they were medium-sized, Twitter bought Summize (Twitter Search) when it was small, and Conde Nast bought Reddit when it was small.
The key seems to be to either let the acquired company continue to do its thing without interference or to fold it into a high-priority project within the acquirer, though.