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FacePay?

techcrunch.com

21–30 of 41 posts

Re: FacePay?

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah I'm one of the messenger-only people, and (obviously) I'm really happy I can use the messenger-only app, but, wow, the way they handled the integration w/ the main FB app is ungodly inelegant, almost to the level of being insulting to the user, IMO.

Re: FacePay?

#22

"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…

While the TechCrunch article is a little off stating it's to save you an extra click Facebook has come out and said splitting it optimized the user experience for the majority of the messenger users. So while their statement is a little off the sentiment is accurate.

Re: FacePay?

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wouldn't call "easier maintenance" a "user experience benefit".

This reminds me of the talk "Is it really Complex? Or did we just make it Complicated?" by Alan Kay.

The complexity of the underlying problem, messaging, has not changed, but FB has made it a lot more complicated.

Re: FacePay?

#24
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If Google were doing this at a large scale, the US Government or state government/s would usually be willing to sue them over it.

At a medium scale (in # of cases), you might find a law firm willing to take on a lot of cases, in exchange for a big cut. You can also choose to pursue your own situation individually.

At a small scale (just your case let's say, and a small'ish sum of money), you're going to mostly be limited to small claim's court, which can work perfectly well sometimes:

http://consumerist.com/2008/01/21/suing-big-companies-in-sma...

Re: FacePay?

#25

"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?

Imagine a venn diagram, where the left circle is "FB users" and the right is "Messanger users". I think it's a quite big overlap. Are you seriously suggesting it was a right decision to degrade the service for the users using both services? That's not optimizing, it's just plain stupid. Nothing would have prevented them from both a) letting people do simple messaging inside the FB app, while at the same time b) providing a kick ass advanced separate Messanger app for the users only interested in messaging.

Re: FacePay?

#26
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately, as Google likes to say, the operate at "Google scale". My guess based on the sheer number of complaints in the forums, there were at least 1,000 merchants that this happened to. However, that was a tiny percentage of the merchant base. So, no one cared. As far as the BBB, they are useless. They consider any response at all from the business as meaning that the business has resolved the complaint. Once they told the BBB that my money was stolen due to "proprietary and confidential" reasons, they marked it as resolved and it actually benefited their BBB rating.

Re: FacePay?

#27

Honest question: has Facebook done anything to indicate that they are willing and able to protect user data? Because social and financial are two words that I don't like seeing near each other. I ask because I deleted my account years ago because I felt I had too little control over what was shared and with who, concerning when the service is from a company with no financial incentive to keep any data private. I have…

I very rarely post to Facebook but I do feel that I know who my data is shared with when I do. They seem to have stopped their ridiculous habit of resetting all my privacy settings to public now as well.

Like Google I imagine they do actually try to protect the data they have beyond what I explicitly share at least to the extent it's not sold (I'm assuming they use the same model as Google and sell ads from the data instead of just selling the data, but their ads are so badly targeted it's hard to tell).

That said I don't see myself giving them financial details because I don't really know what they do with data that's not explicitly shared by users (which like I said has become a lot clearer) and I don't really particularly trust them. Plus I'd be amazed if they ever managed to show an ad I was remotely interested in.

Re: FacePay?

#28
Do retailers really want Facebook owning the entire marketing sales funnel, including the customer relationship? This article makes it sound like this is a new feature for businesses, but it sure doesn't look like they have the best interests of businesses at heart.

It's not friction if you have to smile and say hello to the guy at the apple cart before you buy your apples.

Re: FacePay?

#30
I don't think the author of this article has ever used Facebook or actually read the details on the thing he's writing about. Facebook having a payment method doesn't solve a single problem with either Facebook or payment methods in general.
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