Who knows. In their dataware house all they need is email id to link data from different apps to have a great knowledge about you and send more targeted ads.
Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps
31–40 of 57 posts
Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps
#32I like that they've done with Messenger. All they did was make an app specifically designed for messaging and remove the bolted on version from the main app. You shouldn't notice any UX differences once you install the new Messenger app thanks to the wonders of deeplinking.
I guess this matters less and less as old phones get phased out, but I think there is some memory overhead in having two apps rather than one. Like if you switch apps and then the reaper elects to kill your first app, the switch back isn't so nice. Whatever, edge case.
Another UX edge case is when you hit Messenger directly, there's no backlink to Facebook. That's kind of blah.
Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
if ICQ was so wonderful to use then why did we flee to the next best thing to come along? My feeling was that ICQ sucked in a very horrible way. I was never around for the Friendster days(I was a Livejoural user through and through, damn it), however the reason I suspect MySpace lost out is that they did do the GeoCities thing. Everytime I see people complaining about a new Facebook layout, I always think, "Is this w…
MySpace lost because it lost war to spam. Majority of regular users were just fed up with freaking spam. Tens of comments, invites, messages mass sent from some unknown wannabes. Facebook offered more closed approach - focusing on real life friends and trying to tackle the spam. Remember having 500 friends on MySpace? How many of them have you EVER seen in real life? 10-20% ?
It was also getting really tedious and laggy, and there were lots of fake profiles. I used both MySpace (I played in a band) and Facebook in 2007, for seemingly different reasons and different groups of friends... but eventually everyone moved to Facebook and MySpace got really vacant.
Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
> FB probably recognizes that a Social Network is at its core a directory of connections and the ability to message/talk to each other How many years of hype did it take to bring us to this moment, where we realized we had reinvented ICQ/AIM? I know, I know, I'm being reductive. There is also a sort of Geocities thing bolted on. You know, like Friendster and Myspace
if ICQ was so wonderful to use then why did we flee to the next best thing to come along? My feeling was that ICQ sucked in a very horrible way. I was never around for the Friendster days(I was a Livejoural user through and through, damn it), however the reason I suspect MySpace lost out is that they did do the GeoCities thing. Everytime I see people complaining about a new Facebook layout, I always think, "Is this w…
ICQ was so wonderful to use then why did we flee to the next best thing to come along?
For the same reason we joined ICQ in the first place. Hype, incremental improvement, playing with new toys, and some of our friends were there but not on the previous thing we used.
ICQ did suck. It sucked the way most things suck: given the environment and state of the product at the time of release, they sucked less than other things on at least one metric.
Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like hosting events is trivial. It's finding the events that is difficult. It's trivial to get a stripped down ticketing system going, it's much harder to get people to see those events. I'm surprised there's still not a Google for events.
> I'm surprised there's still not a Google for events. Absolutely. What's going on in Berlin next weekend? To answer that question depending on my interests, I need to check half a dozen different sites, none of them very good or filterable in useful ways. I want to do more fun and interesting stuff, you want to promote your event. It seems like an obvious opportunity for anyone who can at least improve upon the clun…
Yeah, this definitely seems like the inevitable future. Google, what bands will be in Y (town) during X period? It almost feels primitive and painfully slow that we do what we do now.
Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> FB probably recognizes that a Social Network is at its core a directory of connections and the ability to message/talk to each other How many years of hype did it take to bring us to this moment, where we realized we had reinvented ICQ/AIM? I know, I know, I'm being reductive. There is also a sort of Geocities thing bolted on. You know, like Friendster and Myspace
if ICQ was so wonderful to use then why did we flee to the next best thing to come along? My feeling was that ICQ sucked in a very horrible way. I was never around for the Friendster days(I was a Livejoural user through and through, damn it), however the reason I suspect MySpace lost out is that they did do the GeoCities thing. Everytime I see people complaining about a new Facebook layout, I always think, "Is this w…
> Does Facebook have random flash things pegging my CPU to render a cube in 3D with my friend's vacation photos on each face? Does Facebook have auto-playing music? Does Facebook have the option of setting the page's colors to be hideously garish?
No, Facebook has successfully homogenized the identity of individuals. Every person's page is the exact same professional-looking franchise restaurant. BORING. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if people could make their pages individualized in a thoughtful way. Few people are asking them to allow Flash or go full MySpace. Perhaps instead, a library of curated themes, or even fully custom CSS (that could be turned off), a la subreddits.
Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps
#37On the contrary, I think this is about FaceBook knowing exactly what the future holds. - FB probably recognizes that a Social Network is at its core a directory of connections and the ability to message/talk to each other. Until now it took a backseat to over-shared content, when it should have been the other way round. - This app could serve as the foundation for the next FaceBook. Once you strip down an app to its…
> FB probably recognizes that a Social Network is at its core a directory of connections and the ability to message/talk to each other How many years of hype did it take to bring us to this moment, where we realized we had reinvented ICQ/AIM? I know, I know, I'm being reductive. There is also a sort of Geocities thing bolted on. You know, like Friendster and Myspace
The issue isn't technical. That's why attempts at technical solutions reinvent ICQ et al.
The problem with social media (which leads to the demise of every implementation in around 7 years) isn't the media, it's the social.
The problem with social media is modeling degree of interesting. Everyone joins a social media site because the people in a defined group (however that is implemented) are interesting. Over time people join the group, and some leave; alas, those joining tend to be less interesting than whoever was there (and attracted participants), the interesting people tend to leave because they're surrounded by ever more uninteresting people (and find more interesting people elsewhere), traffic increases, signal-to-noise ratio decreases, average level of interesting plummets, people leave because it's boring, cycle repeats elsewhere. Insofar as the site is a directory of connections, participants find their list is dominated by people they don't know/care, but as nobody wants to perform the cruel step of actually sever connections, nor wants to spend the considerable time required to do so, they leave for somewhere fresh (hey, the old account is still available if they want to contact someone, but that ends up just being neglected). Eventually one leaves a trail of abandoned accounts, still active but ID & password - even the site itself - forgotten.
FB has tried to solve this with some algorithm filtering thru activity of friends, leading to a disjointed slate of postings which is interesting enough to casually browse, but suffers from a still low S/N ratio and leaves it almost impossible to find an interesting post short of scrolling thru hundreds of disorganized items. Result is an experience just interesting enough to keep people checking FB, but not exactly useful.
"Upvoting" helps identify interesting posts/users, but that's the decision of the voters, not the reader.
So...someone creates yet another social media site, using some new tech to change the media or voting or ranking or filtering or something ... and it all goes thru the same social media lifecycle, dying when the S/N ratio reduces the activity to little more than yet another directory of connections.
Give me a way to filter those who are interesting to me, with some visual gradient that I can read or skip sections of as I read based on momentary whim. HN's gradients are a useful step, but in the wrong direction: I don't just want the bad posts faded out depending on how many object, I want the higher ranking posts more visible (not just in position but in gradient, as sometimes great high-rated posts are positioned low just because they respond to some mediocre parent); sometimes the most down voted posts are interesting for visceral "train wreck" appeal.
Figure out how to find out what/who I find interesting. Keep what I see interesting, and I'll stick around. Otherwise, it's just the next ICQ directory.
Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps
#38Disclaimer: ex-Facebooker.
> Similarly, there’s a logic to giving Paper some more features, or “bloat,” as engineers derisively call such additions. Although it’s awkward to cram more information into a hidden tab on Paper — if birthdays are so important, why aren’t they in Paper’s main news feed? — the additional information also helps Paper live up to its billing as a place for news and stories from your social graph. For some people, birthdays and invitations are a vital part of that news stream, even if, for others, such information is trivial or better placed in the core Facebook app.
1. The Events and Birthday features were planned before Paper was announced. It's not feature bloat, it's a "second release" feature planned ahead of time.
2. Paper is optimized for a high-quality reading experience, especially longer content, as evidenced by the meticulous attention to detail in the text rendering and the horizontal scrolling. Birthdays would take up a lot of space in the story stream for relatively little content (and how would you order it within the feed, anyway?). Look at the birthday indicator on Facebook WWW, and tell me a name and three words are worth a screen-sized card in the stream. I would be very skeptical.
3. Birthdays arrive regularly and in chronological order. The Notifications jewel is the best place for these things - people also visit it regularly and there's a chronological ordering to it.
As for Nearby, the argument is flimsy. Changing strategy doesn't have to mean sabotaging in-flight development. Perhaps Nearby was developed before or during planning for the shift to the new strategy.
Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't. Just like when you're browsing HN and you get a message you don't want to swap to another app to answer it. That's why the separated Facebook chat app uses message bubbles that you can answer in any app: http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Screen-S... Honestly, it's brilliant, and the sole reason I use Facebook chat for most of my communications.
I had no idea they'd managed to make that work for iOS, that's awesome. Definitely agree, FB chat bubbles for Android are one of the best user experiences I've seen.
AFAIK, on iOS it only works within Facebook's apps. Pretty lame experience compared to the Android version.
Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps
#40Disclaimer: ex-Facebooker. > Similarly, there’s a logic to giving Paper some more features, or “bloat,” as engineers derisively call such additions. Although it’s awkward to cram more information into a hidden tab on Paper — if birthdays are so important, why aren’t they in Paper’s main news feed? — the additional information also helps Paper live up to its billing as a place for news and stories from your social gra…
Am I the only person who thinks the body text on the shrunken preview cards looks terrible?
edit: was reacting to "meticulous attention to detail in the text rendering"