4 ms·

But that's fair. Facebook started out as a startup and it grew over time and eventually become a tech giant. So should Facebook not respond to a business threat

by yeukhon 10y ago

But that's fair. Facebook started out as a startup and it grew over time and eventually become a tech giant. So should Facebook not respond to a business threat from competitors now? Is Snapchat the only one allowed to implement the feature? That's the tone I am hearing. Let's be fair. The product team and the developers working on the Stories product did an amazing job. Also, not every well-established players do well trying to replicate / model after its competitors. Google is known to be one of them, when it comes to her attempt to rip FB apart. Several times more massive than Facebook's size and money pool, but Google failed to make a real den in the market. Facebook is one of the few tech giants today capable of engineering execution that can bring business some values. Disclaimer: I have not seen anyone in my circle using Stories on Facebook yet, but on Instagram plenty. Innovation is competition. Think of the glory 50s - 80s of technical innovations. Something motivates somebody to do something different. Innovation does not necessarily equates to breakthrough. Diversify your product line and product features is innovative. Let's be real fair here.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
Yes let's be fair. It's fair to say that Facebook did not threaten coercion on anyone, and simply responded to market demand for a certain type of service. It's also fair to say that Facebook is in a unique position to be able to use it's considerable platform to absorb mind share away from competing platforms. It's also fair to question if this is a good thing for the ecosystem of technology, and more specifically market technology from many different points of view - namely power distribution. The trend here is that no matter what you do in technology, or how successful you become - you'll never beat Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft or Amazon. So, is that good, neutral, bad? I think probably bad, but I'm not sure. Or maybe the answer is simply that Snapchat is really just a feature that got out of hand and is vastly overpriced.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  I think it is absolutely fair to question. I thought it was not fair when OP stated big brother throwing fist at smaller company (and Snapchat isn't a startup / small player anymore). > you'll never beat Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft or Amazon But Facebook is the youngest. Apple did fail and almost vanish until Steve Jobs came back. Microsoft was sucking on its Windows license and losing so top talents, it came back with Azure and better Windows and Office product. Amazon diversified its product in 2005 and continued to do so now it has so much more capital to invest. But Google destroyed Yahoo, MSN and AOL, and other web directory websites out of business. MySpace is sold. Yahoo is sold. Tumblr's ability to make profit is questionable, and will likely fail eventually. Blackberry failed to come back. Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia all sold after Android came along and too late to adopt (from Seamian to Android). Google's first smartphone was a big step up. Wii U sale wasn't good. I can go on with many examples. Sony's digital music products were doing well then Apple's iPod came along. But was Apple's success a pure luck? A pure technical ingenious coincidence? Sony was much bigger than Apple at the time. The business world is funny because the "too big to fail" will eventually fail one day, either through merge or complete bankruptcy. I predict Uber is too big to fail, but it might eventually pull back its main business back to NA. But that's my wild guess. So the question is fair, but I think there's a question on leadership. Why some big company fail and others strive? Pure luck? Luck is 30%, 70% is people. But I share the sentiment that Stories is not as exciting as hearing a robot can talk to me like a normal human. That would be a huge breakthrough, big innovation, and a whole new business venture. Was Facebook's AI messenger great? No, it was a poor experiment.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    Everything you say makes sense, but I have to add that I think Machine Learning changes the landscape. We're a ML company in the true sense, and I can't tell you how fucking hard it is to compete with these behemoths on AI - and I see it in my fellow startups. ML is becoming literally part of every business process across industries, and guess who is at the center? Google, Amazon, Facebook. So yea, I think this time it's different. They have learned how to adapt as fast as Startups but retain the size of a Fortune 500.
    - yeukhon 10y ago
      Yes, I agree AL is pretty unique. I've seen some new startups like Clarifai trying to win the SDK/SaaS market. Moreover, many of the new startups in AI are generally folks from research division at Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and IBM. AI is quite a selective field, more dense in terms of complexity comparing to building a web application.
- doctorpangloss 10y ago
  You could argue that the healthiest thing for the ecosystem is to build highly defensible, technology-driven businesses. In that sense, Snapchats shouldn't exist at all. On the other hand, giant companies like Facebook are the only ones who can really afford to just steal stuff and make it high performance. A startup's main premise can't be "technology-driven" in the most traditional sense of high performance. A startup will be out-performed by companies with more resources, like giant corporations. Instead, think outside the box: what if you distribute data in a decentralized way, like BitTorrent? What if the bank is distributed, like Bitcoin? What if content wasn't ALLOWED to make money, like CC-NC? What if you organize the world's information by empowering authors, like Wikipedia? People think Google has all the power and all the information, and they forget how much better Wikipedia is at achieving Google's own goals, at 1/100,000th the cost! Wikipedia might not have a mapping product like Google's, and they don't index your e-mail, and it doesn't have as nice of a collaborative editor. Wikipedia is playing a different game altogether. Google thought, well, let's copy/acquire these things that Microsoft does (Office, Exchange, Maps). Google is Microsoft's Facebook. Nothing is going to happen to Microsoft just because Google copies tons of their products, giving them away for free. Is Google bad for the ecosystem? Microsoft (and Snapchat, for that matter) are powerful companies. Baidu copies Google features too—are they bad for the ecosystem? It's not obvious, because our dislike of these giant megacorporations and our assessment of their contributions to society are all colored by politics and opinions. I think we're more interesting in protecting Wikipedias. In my opinion, Wikipedia is beating Google handily in the world's information department. Someone will figure out an unassailable (though not necessarily lucrative) answer to what Facebook and Snapchat attempt to do.
  - yeukhon 10y ago
    > On the other hand, giant companies like Facebook are the only ones who can really afford to just steal stuff and make it high performance. A startup's main premise can't be "technology-driven" in the most traditional sense of high performance. A startup will be out-performed by companies with more resources, like giant corporations. I think it is an excellent point, but I also believe we find a balance. I see your point. Big corporation can spare money to experiment. This is Google's strategy. Throw a hundred developers and $50M investment and if fail remove the project from its catalog two years from now. Move on to the next item. Unfortunately, I think luck being 30% in measuring success is a real deal breaker. Sometimes, your best idea (very profitable) just doesn't take off until the right moment, even if we have the best product team, the best sales pitch, the most intuitive platform. Sometimes it's playing Russian roulette. I recently read about Foursquare - that's a good example. The luck of finding the right people leading a new vision.
lefstathiou 10y ago
Agree here. If people don't like this, what do they expect to happen in a world without patents?
deepGem 10y ago
Google is known to be one of them, when it comes to her attempt to rip FB apart They did and they failed mainly because Zuckerberg took the call to thwart them at any cost, one of the very famous 'lockdown modes'. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-mark-zuckerberg-led-facebooks-war-to-crush-google-plus http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-mark-zuckerberg-l... This was then. Imagine how Facebook will respond to any threat now. The tenor and the impact of their response is evident in the Stories rollout. One might argue, in favour of Snapchat that this is a one-off situation and that Facebook will succumb to the same organisational stasis that big corporations fall into. Facebook falling into stasis doesn't seem likely. If someone has viewpoints to the contrary I'm all ears. Snapchat will have a real tough time fighting Facebook.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  Right, and that's how I would respond as a CEO. What choice does he have? Let Snapchat grow and Facebook and Instagram failing to attract younger users? But back to my point. Even Google couldn't win Facebook with all that cash flow. But is size the real reason? No. It's the execution that matters. The thing I hear a lot about Google is that there could be multiple version of the same "product" competing for final launch, Google+ was like that. In the end I feel that's a bit of a hackathon-ish competition. Lots of defects, unclear product vision and perhaps low morale. Anyway, small company can still win. There are many examples of that out there.
- losteverything 10y ago
  <At Facebook, even then and certainly later, you got along by going along, and everyone sacrificing his or her entire life for the cause was as much about self-sacrifice and team building as it was an actual measure of your productivity. Thanks for sharing this. A quote I won't forget. Seems unreal, really.

by yeukhon 10y ago

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

Yes let's be fair. It's fair to say that Facebook did not threaten coercion on anyone, and simply responded to market demand for a certain type of service. It's also fair to say that Facebook is in a unique position to be able to use it's considerable platform to absorb mind share away from competing platforms. It's also fair to question if this is a good thing for the ecosystem of technology, and more specifically market technology from many different points of view - namely power distribution. The trend here is that no matter what you do in technology, or how successful you become - you'll never beat Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft or Amazon. So, is that good, neutral, bad? I think probably bad, but I'm not sure. Or maybe the answer is simply that Snapchat is really just a feature that got out of hand and is vastly overpriced.

yeukhon 10y ago
I think it is absolutely fair to question. I thought it was not fair when OP stated big brother throwing fist at smaller company (and Snapchat isn't a startup / small player anymore). > you'll never beat Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft or Amazon But Facebook is the youngest. Apple did fail and almost vanish until Steve Jobs came back. Microsoft was sucking on its Windows license and losing so top talents, it came back with Azure and better Windows and Office product. Amazon diversified its product in 2005 and continued to do so now it has so much more capital to invest. But Google destroyed Yahoo, MSN and AOL, and other web directory websites out of business. MySpace is sold. Yahoo is sold. Tumblr's ability to make profit is questionable, and will likely fail eventually. Blackberry failed to come back. Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia all sold after Android came along and too late to adopt (from Seamian to Android). Google's first smartphone was a big step up. Wii U sale wasn't good. I can go on with many examples. Sony's digital music products were doing well then Apple's iPod came along. But was Apple's success a pure luck? A pure technical ingenious coincidence? Sony was much bigger than Apple at the time. The business world is funny because the "too big to fail" will eventually fail one day, either through merge or complete bankruptcy. I predict Uber is too big to fail, but it might eventually pull back its main business back to NA. But that's my wild guess. So the question is fair, but I think there's a question on leadership. Why some big company fail and others strive? Pure luck? Luck is 30%, 70% is people. But I share the sentiment that Stories is not as exciting as hearing a robot can talk to me like a normal human. That would be a huge breakthrough, big innovation, and a whole new business venture. Was Facebook's AI messenger great? No, it was a poor experiment.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  Everything you say makes sense, but I have to add that I think Machine Learning changes the landscape. We're a ML company in the true sense, and I can't tell you how fucking hard it is to compete with these behemoths on AI - and I see it in my fellow startups. ML is becoming literally part of every business process across industries, and guess who is at the center? Google, Amazon, Facebook. So yea, I think this time it's different. They have learned how to adapt as fast as Startups but retain the size of a Fortune 500.
  - yeukhon 10y ago
    Yes, I agree AL is pretty unique. I've seen some new startups like Clarifai trying to win the SDK/SaaS market. Moreover, many of the new startups in AI are generally folks from research division at Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and IBM. AI is quite a selective field, more dense in terms of complexity comparing to building a web application.
doctorpangloss 10y ago
You could argue that the healthiest thing for the ecosystem is to build highly defensible, technology-driven businesses. In that sense, Snapchats shouldn't exist at all. On the other hand, giant companies like Facebook are the only ones who can really afford to just steal stuff and make it high performance. A startup's main premise can't be "technology-driven" in the most traditional sense of high performance. A startup will be out-performed by companies with more resources, like giant corporations. Instead, think outside the box: what if you distribute data in a decentralized way, like BitTorrent? What if the bank is distributed, like Bitcoin? What if content wasn't ALLOWED to make money, like CC-NC? What if you organize the world's information by empowering authors, like Wikipedia? People think Google has all the power and all the information, and they forget how much better Wikipedia is at achieving Google's own goals, at 1/100,000th the cost! Wikipedia might not have a mapping product like Google's, and they don't index your e-mail, and it doesn't have as nice of a collaborative editor. Wikipedia is playing a different game altogether. Google thought, well, let's copy/acquire these things that Microsoft does (Office, Exchange, Maps). Google is Microsoft's Facebook. Nothing is going to happen to Microsoft just because Google copies tons of their products, giving them away for free. Is Google bad for the ecosystem? Microsoft (and Snapchat, for that matter) are powerful companies. Baidu copies Google features too—are they bad for the ecosystem? It's not obvious, because our dislike of these giant megacorporations and our assessment of their contributions to society are all colored by politics and opinions. I think we're more interesting in protecting Wikipedias. In my opinion, Wikipedia is beating Google handily in the world's information department. Someone will figure out an unassailable (though not necessarily lucrative) answer to what Facebook and Snapchat attempt to do.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  > On the other hand, giant companies like Facebook are the only ones who can really afford to just steal stuff and make it high performance. A startup's main premise can't be "technology-driven" in the most traditional sense of high performance. A startup will be out-performed by companies with more resources, like giant corporations. I think it is an excellent point, but I also believe we find a balance. I see your point. Big corporation can spare money to experiment. This is Google's strategy. Throw a hundred developers and $50M investment and if fail remove the project from its catalog two years from now. Move on to the next item. Unfortunately, I think luck being 30% in measuring success is a real deal breaker. Sometimes, your best idea (very profitable) just doesn't take off until the right moment, even if we have the best product team, the best sales pitch, the most intuitive platform. Sometimes it's playing Russian roulette. I recently read about Foursquare - that's a good example. The luck of finding the right people leading a new vision.

lefstathiou 10y ago

Agree here. If people don't like this, what do they expect to happen in a world without patents?

deepGem 10y ago

Google is known to be one of them, when it comes to her attempt to rip FB apart They did and they failed mainly because Zuckerberg took the call to thwart them at any cost, one of the very famous 'lockdown modes'. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-mark-zuckerberg-led-facebooks-war-to-crush-google-plus http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-mark-zuckerberg-l... This was then. Imagine how Facebook will respond to any threat now. The tenor and the impact of their response is evident in the Stories rollout. One might argue, in favour of Snapchat that this is a one-off situation and that Facebook will succumb to the same organisational stasis that big corporations fall into. Facebook falling into stasis doesn't seem likely. If someone has viewpoints to the contrary I'm all ears. Snapchat will have a real tough time fighting Facebook.

yeukhon 10y ago
Right, and that's how I would respond as a CEO. What choice does he have? Let Snapchat grow and Facebook and Instagram failing to attract younger users? But back to my point. Even Google couldn't win Facebook with all that cash flow. But is size the real reason? No. It's the execution that matters. The thing I hear a lot about Google is that there could be multiple version of the same "product" competing for final launch, Google+ was like that. In the end I feel that's a bit of a hackathon-ish competition. Lots of defects, unclear product vision and perhaps low morale. Anyway, small company can still win. There are many examples of that out there.
losteverything 10y ago
<At Facebook, even then and certainly later, you got along by going along, and everyone sacrificing his or her entire life for the cause was as much about self-sacrifice and team building as it was an actual measure of your productivity. Thanks for sharing this. A quote I won't forget. Seems unreal, really.