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

The sad story of Facebook Platform

pandodaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 105 posts

Re: The sad story of Facebook Platform

#31

Post by prostoalex »

mratzloff wrote: post #5

Facebook made three clear mistakes: - Not building in a revenue model into their platform, like Apple did with iOS. This is so stupid. - Not creating clear and consistent access rules around the social graph and notifications, with the ability to throttle down (but not altogether remove) access for offenders. They could even automate the throttling based on user feedback (in the form of clicks). - Breaking things con…

>> - Not building in a revenue model into their platform, like Apple did with iOS. This is so stupid.

It was not completely obvious in 2007 that in-app virtual item transactions were to stay. Facebook itself was playing around with virtual gifts, but convincing users to pull out their credit card on a social network was novel.

It was pretty hard to predict specific monetization pattern - iLike looked into ticket-selling, Visual Bookshelf would do affiliate links to Amazon, Slide's apps would monetize through standard banner ads (and later video ads), Zynga was not even around at the time.

Re: The sad story of Facebook Platform

#32

Post by shmerl »

“Right now, social networks are closed platforms,” Zuckerberg said. “And today, we’re going to end that.”

Impossible (for Facebook). Open platforms are open decentralized social networks like Diaspora. Facebook will always have profiles exploitation interest and it's a failure by default for anyone caring about openness of the Web.

Re: The sad story of Facebook Platform

#35

Post by colinhowe »

badman_ting wrote: post #20
mratzloff wrote: post #5

Facebook made three clear mistakes: - Not building in a revenue model into their platform, like Apple did with iOS. This is so stupid. - Not creating clear and consistent access rules around the social graph and notifications, with the ability to throttle down (but not altogether remove) access for offenders. They could even automate the throttling based on user feedback (in the form of clicks). - Breaking things con…

Even though it generally drives me nuts, the "move fast and break things" mindset can work in some situations. Building a platform for others to rely upon is not one of them. I never understood why they repeatedly broke their platform so much, unless they honestly did not care how it affected those downstream. But if they didn't care, why even build a platform? Even the most cowboy of coders can see why always breaki…

I wonder what this mindset does for the future employability of FB people, do people really want to employ people who are (basically) reckless?

Re: The sad story of Facebook Platform

#36

Post by dano414 »

My problem with facebook; it's a reminder of how much our current society bothers me. At first is was cute-- kind of, but as the time went on it just got nauseating. The narcissism The birthdays The baby picture--animals fine, but enough with your spawn. The touching quotes The pictures of what you ate. The head tilted portrait. The reminder that people don't change.

Actually, the only facebook posts I can stomach are from the Amish--sad, but true.

Re: The sad story of Facebook Platform

#38

Post by prometheuspk »

mratzloff wrote: post #5

Facebook made three clear mistakes: - Not building in a revenue model into their platform, like Apple did with iOS. This is so stupid. - Not creating clear and consistent access rules around the social graph and notifications, with the ability to throttle down (but not altogether remove) access for offenders. They could even automate the throttling based on user feedback (in the form of clicks). - Breaking things con…

I apologise for my ignorance, but can you elaborate on how the iOS has a revenue model? Are you talking about the Apple Store?

Re: The sad story of Facebook Platform

#39

Post by freshhawk »

Facebook’s inconstant behavior on Platform, however, has never been malicious. Rather, it is a result of an engineering-led culture"

Seems me and pandodaily have a different definition of "engineer". I'm not an engineer, as I don't have an engineering degree, but I do feel bad for my friends who do, are professionals, and get grouped in with the type of programmers who are just haphazardly winging it to this degree.

"has never been malicious": heh, the argument is that encouraging businesses to rely on a platform that intentionally and knowingly doesn't deliver isn't malicious because the root cause is incompetence or not caring. Not sure about that one.

Re: The sad story of Facebook Platform

#40

Post by vinbreau »

btipling wrote: post #23
Eduard wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brief, frustrating experience maintaining a Facebook application consisted of the app breaking every two weeks as Facebook somewhat randomly changed things without warning. When did you have this experience? How long ago is it? For now quite some time, Facebook has been open with upcoming "breaking changes", giving Facebook App developers three months in advance to adapt accordingly: https://developers.facebook.co…

2008-2009 I dealt with the Facebook API and they often broke things. The breaking changes notifications have improved things, but they still break things. Their insight analytics was broken for about a year. They just don't seem to care about their API.

Agreed. I've been working with their API for the last 2 years. When it does break it can take forever to get a response. I work for a Facebook preferred developer so we have an extra channel for getting bug feedback. If we weren't a preferred developer, we would have had API bugs go unaddressed for months. Sure there were warnings about some changes, but sometimes major changes occurred that we did not see coming and had to scramble to figure out workarounds.
Post reply on HN