Facebook buys Parse • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#31

Post by ripter » Thu, Apr 25, 2013, 9:31 PM UTC

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?

I can't speak on the push notification part, but I used Parse because it removed the need for backend servers. Parse handles the DB and routes.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#32

Post by kevinbluer » Thu, Apr 25, 2013, 9:31 PM UTC

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?

They also offer a full mobile back-end (increasingly referred to as MBaaS...admittedly not the nicest acronym): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backend_as_a_service

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#33

Post by aashaykumar92 » Thu, Apr 25, 2013, 9:33 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #22

Apocryphon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Google should've bought Facebook years ago, when it was still small.

Do you really think Zuckerberg would have agreed to that? I doubt it. Facebook was still relatively small when Yahoo offered to buy them for $1 billion but Zuckerberg didn't give it much thought at all.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#34

Post by fizx » Thu, Apr 25, 2013, 9:33 PM UTC

Here's my speculation: Facebook bought Parse to attempt to own mobile usage data. Draw parallels with what Google did when they bought Urchin to form Google Analytics. I don't think Facebook cares about creating developer experiences. I think they care about having tracking hooks into mobile applications.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#35

Post by crabasa » Thu, Apr 25, 2013, 9:34 PM UTC

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?

Cloudmine - https://cloudmine.me

Azure Mobile Services - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#36

Post by argonaut » Thu, Apr 25, 2013, 9:35 PM UTC

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?

Not everyone knows backend development. And going from 0-60 with rails/django/sinatra/flask is non-trivial for a lot of people with no server-side experience.

I know a lot of college students, for example, who know iOS development after taking a class, but don't know any server-side stuff.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#37

Post by Maarten88 » Thu, Apr 25, 2013, 9:35 PM UTC

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?

Azure Mobile Services - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#38

Post by BillySquid » Thu, Apr 25, 2013, 9:35 PM UTC

Good news for the Parse team, but not so good for Parse users.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#39

Post by jjuliano » Thu, Apr 25, 2013, 9:35 PM UTC

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…

Given the very lucrative and competitive mobile market space, we will likely to see tremendous updates in the Android platform if Google have acquired it.

At least Facebook won't be biased about what mobile platform to support, it can support all other platforms without focusing on specific Android.

I use Parse as my backend for my iOS apps and it is absolutely useful. They provided a great service and the mPaAS approach to developing and managing mobile apps data and services is revolutionary.

Re: Facebook buys Parse

#40

Post by apalmer » Thu, Apr 25, 2013, 9:37 PM UTC

zan2434 wrote: post #5

Whoa. This is pretty big news. This + Piecable + Facebook's huge push in mobile development recently = Facebook building a new, simpler development platform/environment for mobile apps? This speculation can be taken pretty far.

Facebooks problem is a fundamental development culture one, 'move fast and break things' is not great from the perspective of developers latching onto your platform. If the reward is great enough, yes its worth it...