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

FacePay?

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 41 posts

Re: FacePay?

#11

Post by downandout »

frik wrote: post #4

> What if buying something was as easy as Liking it? You’d probably buy a lot more, and buy it through whoever made it so damn simple. Exactly. There is Paypal. Afaik, Amazon and Google discontinued their similar service that was in competition with Paypal (API for third party website payments) - but why? (I think that were the services: Amazon WebPay, Google Checkout)

Google Checkout shutdown because it had reputational issues among merchants, and culture clash issues with the rest of Google. Payment platforms require human support personnel, and this is something that Google is diametrically opposed to. They algorithmically suspended many merchant accounts early in the service's life, with no explanation as to why and no one to talk to about it. This happened to me; I wound up filing a BBB complaint and they responded saying the reasons that they effectively stole thousands of dollars from me after months of operations without a single chargeback were "proprietary and confidential". I was not alone; the Google Checkout support forums were filled with stories like mine.

This is why no one should ever use Google for any critical function that may require support (cloud servers etc.). Google just doesn't do the whole "human" thing very well. If it goes terribly wrong and they refuse to talk to you, good luck suing them unless you are a Fortune 500 company.

Re: FacePay?

#12

Post by itsbits »

This won't be like WebPay or Checkout. Considering all the businesses and Family/Friends already in FB, this can be put into very good use.

But I was kind of waiting for Youtube competant from Facebook for sometime now. I think Facebook is one of the major sources for Youtube and FB has ability to do something about it.

Re: FacePay?

#13

Post by JoelJacobson »

"Facebook split Messenger off into its own app to save you one extra click on the Messages tab."

Uhm, what? What they did was forcing their users to open up a separate app to do something with was working great already within the app, without having to open up a separate app. But now every time you want to do messaging, you have to wait the extra two seconds for "Messenger" to open up. What a terrible example by the TechCrunch author. Maybe he was ironic?

Re: FacePay?

#14

Post by [deleted] »

JoelJacobson wrote: post #13

"Facebook split Messenger off into its own app to save you one extra click on the Messages tab." Uhm, what? What they did was forcing their users to open up a separate app to do something with was working great already within the app, without having to open up a separate app. But now every time you want to do messaging, you have to wait the extra two seconds for "Messenger" to open up. What a terrible example by the…

[deleted]

Re: FacePay?

#15

Post by philtar »

JoelJacobson wrote: post #13

"Facebook split Messenger off into its own app to save you one extra click on the Messages tab." Uhm, what? What they did was forcing their users to open up a separate app to do something with was working great already within the app, without having to open up a separate app. But now every time you want to do messaging, you have to wait the extra two seconds for "Messenger" to open up. What a terrible example by the…

If you took a moment to think of use cases other than your own, you would realize that there's a lot of us that ONLY use facebook messenger. I haven't checked my newsfeed in ages.

Re: FacePay?

#16

Post by JoelJacobson »

philtar wrote: post #15
JoelJacobson wrote: post #13

"Facebook split Messenger off into its own app to save you one extra click on the Messages tab." Uhm, what? What they did was forcing their users to open up a separate app to do something with was working great already within the app, without having to open up a separate app. But now every time you want to do messaging, you have to wait the extra two seconds for "Messenger" to open up. What a terrible example by the…

If you took a moment to think of use cases other than your own, you would realize that there's a lot of us that ONLY use facebook messenger. I haven't checked my newsfeed in ages.

Good for you, and all other Messenger-only-users. But why force all other users who are using the Facebook-app to open up a separate app when they want to send or read messages?

Re: FacePay?

#17

Post by xyby »

downandout wrote: post #11
frik wrote: post #4

> What if buying something was as easy as Liking it? You’d probably buy a lot more, and buy it through whoever made it so damn simple. Exactly. There is Paypal. Afaik, Amazon and Google discontinued their similar service that was in competition with Paypal (API for third party website payments) - but why? (I think that were the services: Amazon WebPay, Google Checkout)

Google Checkout shutdown because it had reputational issues among merchants, and culture clash issues with the rest of Google. Payment platforms require human support personnel, and this is something that Google is diametrically opposed to. They algorithmically suspended many merchant accounts early in the service's life, with no explanation as to why and no one to talk to about it. This happened to me; I wound up fi…

Im not in the US, so I wonder: If big company like Google owes you money - isn't there some institution that will help you get it? Maybe the BBB?

Especially if Google wrongfully kept the money from many customers. I would think some government run institutions would get going. Something like the "public prosecutor's office" or so.

Re: FacePay?

#18

Post by testingonprod »

JoelJacobson wrote: post #16
philtar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you took a moment to think of use cases other than your own, you would realize that there's a lot of us that ONLY use facebook messenger. I haven't checked my newsfeed in ages.

Good for you, and all other Messenger-only-users. But why force all other users who are using the Facebook-app to open up a separate app when they want to send or read messages?

They expected to add a TON of complexity to the messenger product (they announced messenger as a platform at F8) and they needed a way to decouple the already complex main FB app. It buys them a bunch of things, like easier maintenance, extensibility, and ability to push updates independently among other user experience benefits.

They also didn't want to split the user experience of using Facebook messenger on mobile and hence the forced switch.

It was only a big deal because of the surface area of the world that the main Facebook product (w/ messenger) covers. I guarantee you that if Google did something like that no one would care (at least not enough to give 20,000+ 1 star reviews)

Re: FacePay?

#19

Post by NeutronBoy »

JoelJacobson wrote: post #13

"Facebook split Messenger off into its own app to save you one extra click on the Messages tab." Uhm, what? What they did was forcing their users to open up a separate app to do something with was working great already within the app, without having to open up a separate app. But now every time you want to do messaging, you have to wait the extra two seconds for "Messenger" to open up. What a terrible example by the…

They had a good blog post about this, which gave a good explanation. Basically it said that some huge percentage of FB app use was messsanger, so why not optimise for that use case instead?

Re: FacePay?

#20

Post by frik »

itsbits wrote: post #12

This won't be like WebPay or Checkout. Considering all the businesses and Family/Friends already in FB, this can be put into very good use. But I was kind of waiting for Youtube competant from Facebook for sometime now. I think Facebook is one of the major sources for Youtube and FB has ability to do something about it.

YouTube belongs to Google. I too wonder why Google hasn't focused more of their attention on YT. It's their social network hub that works fine for about one billion people.

Do the G+ comments below YT videos make sense? No (from the users point of view) . There used to be insightful replies to YT comments including video-replies. All that has vanished, only spam remains. Beside that, anyone remember their older social hubs Google Buzz and Orkut?

Post reply on HN