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FacePay?

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Re: FacePay?

#31

Post by hvm »

JoelJacobson wrote: post #25
NeutronBoy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) provi…

How do you have better data than Facebook on how many users use the Messenger functionality and how many use all the others (feed, etc.)?

And having the same functionality in two apps is not a good idea in any scenario.

Re: FacePay?

#32

Post by exelius »

Facebook has a huge opportunity here to build the mobile payment killer app. If they can get this integrated with NFC, you can pay for the tab at a restaurant and split the check among you and your friends. Realistically, you could use it to split nearly ANY bill - Facebook just has to build an interface.

The only question is if the payment processors and Apple/Google will leave the door open wide enough.

Re: FacePay?

#33

Post by cookiecaper »

downandout wrote: post #26
xyby wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It should be clarified for the general readership that the BBB is a private enterprise; basically, the pre-internet Yelp. Since they call themselves a "bureau", many people think they're a governmental agency, but they're not.

BBB doesn't benefit by alienating businesses or making it "difficult" to resolve complaints, and they have no obligation to actually help the consumer. There are a lot of shady companies with really good BBB ratings.

BBB is on its way out I think, superseded by crowdsourced review sites. People don't check BBB ratings very often anymore.

Re: FacePay?

#34

Post by dhimes »

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.

May I ask, why? With all the other options, including just text messaging?

Re: FacePay?

#35

Post by dhimes »

NeutronBoy wrote: post #19
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?

I thought it was a technical reason, like there was only so much you could do with an ios app so they needed to turn it into two. I don't develop ios so it wasn't clear to me exactly what the issue was.

Re: FacePay?

#36

Post by dhimes »

adventured wrote: post #24
xyby wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lim…

But isn't it illegal? Isn't there a criminal prosecution aspect to it?

Re: FacePay?

#37

Post by richardbrevig »

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…

Because of this change it now takes 1-14 days for my to respond to a facebook message. I see no need to install a separate app when I'm already debating uninstalling facebook's app. And usually I'm not motivated to log into facebooks' website just to read and respond to the message. So they sit there until I finally get bored enough to do it. Granted, in all fairness, I probably get under 4 messages a month.

Not complaining, just sharing my experience.

Re: FacePay?

#38

Post by adventured »

dhimes wrote: post #36
adventured wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lim…

But isn't it illegal? Isn't there a criminal prosecution aspect to it?

The correct answer to that is: it depends, aka not necessarily.

Most likely what Google is doing, is dancing in the gray area. For example, is it criminal when PayPal hits you with a chargeback because a customer lies about x y or z? Given their size there's no question they do that a lot. Google would argue their business choices, like shutting down someone's wallet account (with money in it), falls into a similar category of business discretion - rather than being criminal.

This is why almost all of what the SEC does is civil enforcement, fines, etc. In business there are almost always cases of financial loss due to ignorance, incompetence, discretion, risk taking and so on - most of that is not properly going to be criminal, but rather civil.

Were Google doing something inappropriate in an area involving business discretion, the government may decide it's not ok, but not criminal (eg lacking the intention to defraud). In that case, they'll typically try to put a stop to the behavior, and use fines to do so. At times it can be incredibly difficult to show a company is intending to defraud its customers, the Feds would need a hard trail of evidence (emails, communication, etc. showing Google was trying to defraud customers).

Re: FacePay?

#39

Post by dragonwriter »

xyby wrote: post #17
downandout wrote: post #11

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 big company like Google owes you money - isn't there some institution that will help you get it?

That's what the civil justice system is for.

> Especially if Google wrongfully kept the money from many customers. I would think some government run institutions would get going.

There's some government institutions (other than the courts themselves) that might have authority to initiate action in certain cases, but in general "not paying out funds the way I think is required based on the contract I have with you" is the kind of thing handled through private actions in the civil justice system.

> Something like the "public prosecutor's office" or so.

While its possible that anything wrong Google might have done might rise to the level of a criminal, rather than civil, wrong, none of the descriptions I've seen point to anything that (even if the descriptions are presumed to be completely correct) seems obviously criminal.

Re: FacePay?

#40

Post by chrischen »

frik wrote: post #10
chrischen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Apple Pay inside apps, and for retailers.

That's not the point. Inside their walled garden, Amazon's and Google's payment works fine too. The point was it used to be easy to use their services outside in the open internet on normal websites like Paypal.

A very big Walled Garden. As an owner of an ecommerce site, I can tell you it's very tempting to create an App version just to take advantage of one-tap thumbprint orders.

Also I don't think Amazon or Google have a TouchID payment system.

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