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Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps

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Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps

#51

Post by the_watcher »

ionforce wrote: post #32
the_watcher wrote: post #4

I 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.

Yeah, that is irritating, but when the deeplinking to Messenger first started, there was never a backlink to the Facebook app. That's changed, and I bet Messenger will too.

Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps

#53

Post by otisfunkmeyer »

debt wrote: post #23
buro9 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://attending.io/ is doing this. They're focusing on the market below EventBrite, small free events and small venue (i.e. tech user talks) that may require a small fee. It's really refreshing to be able to just say "I want to attend that event" and for it to be a few clicks rather than an arduous check-out process. Note: Whilst they have a "browse" button at the top, they've started by providing stand-alone pages…

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 think this is without question analogous to Stripe. As pg said, the reason Stripe was able to succeed is that no one else was willing to do it: it was too obviously hard. The mountain that would need to be climbed was apparent from the start.

I think this one is similar. Aggregating all of these events for all of these niches from all of these websites is just both so obviously needed and so obviously difficult that no one has wo/man'd up to do it (at least as far as we know).

I have lamented on this one since at least 2007 when Yahoo bought that startup that was trying to do exactly this (can't remember the name).

One day it will happen and the world will be quite a bit better. Obviously :)

Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps

#54

Post by taiki »

jquery wrote: post #36
taiki wrote: post #24

Earlier 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…

> 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…

I don't want my system to crawl or my eyes to burn because someone decided that yellow on white or white on yellow or yellow on magenta was a good idea or that having a song from 2006 auto play whenever i browsed to someone's page was a good idea or...

If you want all of that, build yourself a home page. Tumblr and Livejournal did it right by offering ways to view someone's account with out their idea of what good taste is. Still, between NO customization and customization, I'll take the bland option.

It works great on Reddit for subreddits because if you get it wrong, you can just move to another subreddit or find a moderator who knows a thing or two about CSS.

I can't just up and find friends who aren't fucking colorblind.

Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps

#55

Post by wlesieutre »

griffinmb wrote: post #15
wlesieutre wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Messaging is definitely still in the main iOS app. They advertise "The new Messenger" with banners to get you to switch, but I haven't bothered. I tried it out briefly, and IIRC had some trouble with chat notifications still coming from the main Facebook app. I could turn off notifications for it, but that'd kill all of the other notifications too. Making chat only in Messenger would solve this, if they haven't fixed…

Interesting. Maybe Facebook is doing some kind of rollout, because I didn't feel like making the switch but eventually I was forced to. I still get the notifications in my original FB app, but when I press "messages," I'm taken to the Messenger app.

Just tried again, it looks like once you have Messenger installed it gets disabled in the main app. And this time my message notifications are coming from the actual app that I can read messages in, so I'll stick with it.

Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps

#56

Post by themusicgod1 »

taiki wrote: post #24
pekk wrote: post #21

Earlier 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…

I'm getting reports from multiple contacts that Facebook is putting autoplaying music videos in strategic places. Very myspace-ish.

Re: Why Facebook Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Its Apps

#57

Post by a8000 »

superuser2 wrote: post #50
a8000 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a startup focussing on only events and doing them well could have some potential.

Why? Everyone I know has Facebook and uses it frequently. No one I know uses email unless absolutely necessary. No one I know is interested in recreating identities and friendship mappings across a bunch of discrete apps.

Events in the sense of: Here are all the queer reggae parties in Birmingham tonight/the next three months displayed on a map. If you decide to attend, get a semianonymous link you can send to all your friends by whatever method you chose, they can decide to attend simply by adding themselves to the list. Basically like doodle.com but with public location sensitive event listing. No signup or authentification required. There is no good reason to tighly couple all this to a online friendlist, you can just as easily manage your friends with an offline contact list that is synced to all your devices and use email/im to communicate.
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