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Facebook buys Parse

techcrunch.com

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Re: Facebook buys Parse

#141

Post by buzzrecords »

julianpye wrote: post #86
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…

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.

Buddy would be a better acquisition target for Azure - their BaaS platform is more aligned with Azure's tech and Microsoft is an investor in Buddy (although, Google was an investor in Parse).

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#142

Post by buzzrecords »

oneplusone wrote: post #4

Damn. I was going to use Parse for my app, but now I will not. What are some of the alternatives out there?

Buddy.com; StackMob; Kinvey; Appcelerator Cloud, etc...

There's a bunch out there. Buddy has advanced analytics, Kinvey charges by the user (vs. by APIs), StackMob basically runs an affiliate model upselling companion services.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#143

Post by monkeyspaw »

dweekly wrote: post #126
oneplusone wrote: post #4

Damn. I was going to use Parse for my app, but now I will not. What are some of the alternatives out there?

Bummer. Can I ask why this changed your mind? At FB, we're quite serious about finding ways to gift third party developers with APIs, tools, open source, platforms, whatever we can do to help. I think Parse is pretty awesome and is likely to become more so at Facebook. That's a useless opinion if it's not shared by the wider community, though. So: feedback taken seriously - we're listening. Fire away.

As someone in a similar situation: I don't like tie ins with huge companies. My experience with the Facebook API has been horrible in the past (constantly changing, poor documentation).

In short, I don't want FB/Goog/Apple/etc. to keep buying up the independent operators that I know and love. In a similar way, I prefer to frequent my local coffee shack over a Starbucks. Nothing Starbucks could do would really change my mind.

There's not really anything facebook could do other than not being facebook. Sorry.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#144

Post by dudurocha »

dweekly wrote: post #126
oneplusone wrote: post #4

Damn. I was going to use Parse for my app, but now I will not. What are some of the alternatives out there?

Bummer. Can I ask why this changed your mind? At FB, we're quite serious about finding ways to gift third party developers with APIs, tools, open source, platforms, whatever we can do to help. I think Parse is pretty awesome and is likely to become more so at Facebook. That's a useless opinion if it's not shared by the wider community, though. So: feedback taken seriously - we're listening. Fire away.

I think he is worried, thinking facebook may kill Parse, and he will have no support.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#145

Post by dweekly »

monkeyspaw wrote: post #143
dweekly wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bummer. Can I ask why this changed your mind? At FB, we're quite serious about finding ways to gift third party developers with APIs, tools, open source, platforms, whatever we can do to help. I think Parse is pretty awesome and is likely to become more so at Facebook. That's a useless opinion if it's not shared by the wider community, though. So: feedback taken seriously - we're listening. Fire away.

As someone in a similar situation: I don't like tie ins with huge companies. My experience with the Facebook API has been horrible in the past (constantly changing, poor documentation). In short, I don't want FB/Goog/Apple/etc. to keep buying up the independent operators that I know and love. In a similar way, I prefer to frequent my local coffee shack over a Starbucks. Nothing Starbucks could do would really change…

I'm really sorry you've had bad experiences with the API. :/ I'm not sure how much consolation it will be to you, but we've gotten a lot better about this, even in the last year, increasing platform stability, improving our documentation, adding guides and Developers Live, giving 90+ day heads ups for breaking changes that you can opt-in to.

Facebook's definitely not going to stop changing and sit on its laurels; our Platform is going to evolve as well. I know this means work for developers but we'd like to do so hand-in-hand with our community, working together to build a better future. We're learning how to do that. We've made mistakes. But we're here for you and are trying every day to give you more.

Email me at dew@fb.com if you prefer to rant in a private forum, or here and I'll respond.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#146

Post by dweekly »

dudurocha wrote: post #144
dweekly wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bummer. Can I ask why this changed your mind? At FB, we're quite serious about finding ways to gift third party developers with APIs, tools, open source, platforms, whatever we can do to help. I think Parse is pretty awesome and is likely to become more so at Facebook. That's a useless opinion if it's not shared by the wider community, though. So: feedback taken seriously - we're listening. Fire away.

I think he is worried, thinking facebook may kill Parse, and he will have no support.

[nod] But we did not buy Parse to kill it!

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#147

Post by zacaltman »

dweekly wrote: post #126
oneplusone wrote: post #4

Damn. I was going to use Parse for my app, but now I will not. What are some of the alternatives out there?

Bummer. Can I ask why this changed your mind? At FB, we're quite serious about finding ways to gift third party developers with APIs, tools, open source, platforms, whatever we can do to help. I think Parse is pretty awesome and is likely to become more so at Facebook. That's a useless opinion if it's not shared by the wider community, though. So: feedback taken seriously - we're listening. Fire away.

First off, Parse is awesome and I love it!

I have the same concerns (although I already have apps using Parse in the wild!): • Will FB kill off Parse? Seems quite unlikely in the short term, but in the long term? • Are they going to try and force any integrations with FB? • Will Parse continue to improve (they've done a lot of this recently!) or will it dwindle as others move faster? • Data / Privacy - what's going to happen with those going forward? These always are a concern in people's minds when FB comes up. • Facebook's APIs / Developer Support is SHIT... will this happen to Parse too?

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#148

Post by bennyg »

markerdmann wrote: post #21
oneplusone wrote: post #4

Damn. I was going to use Parse for my app, but now I will not. What are some of the alternatives out there?

http://helios.io/ is an open-source backend framework.

Looks sweet, thanks for the recommendation. Whenever I get a box I'll look into using this for Push services.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#150

Post by pg »

jsnell wrote: post #118
txttran wrote: post #74

Does $85M seem really cheap to anyone else?

No? From what I can see they've taken less than a 10th of that in VC. And this is the first time in over a year that I've heard anything about them. Buzz isn't everything, and maybe there was a viable business there. But they certainly weren't setting the world on fire. It's pretty hard to see how a near $100 million exit in circumstances like that would be disappointing or "really cheap". (And congrats certainly see…

But they certainly weren't setting the world on fire.

Actually their growth was very good, among the steepest of all the 500 or so companies we've funded.

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