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I am curious how many people actually feel this is cool that Facebook can simply copy everything Snapchat comes up with? I understand that this is the way of th

I am curious how many people actually feel this is cool that Facebook can simply copy everything Snapchat comes up with? I understand that this is the way of the world. Big fish eats smaller fish yada yada. But is it good in the long run? I don't know how to do this, and I understand any solution will probably be riddled to the core with loopholes. But I do feel like there should be some way to prevent this kind of monopolization. What do you all think from a long-term, idealistic perspective?

ensiferum 9y ago
And ofc you need this story with some 30-sonething superstars self promoting hotshot CEO who is the capable of coming up with the solution of simply copying the competition.
tomcam 9y ago
Any solution is hard to enforce. Idealistically, the computer world has largely decided cross pollination, while sometimes painful for just the reason you describe, is better for all of us (I agree, and purposely chose not to patent technology that has been worth millions for me and my competitors over the last 17 years).
Nomentatus 9y ago
The law feels it is illegal - but we don't enforce laws meant to limit market power and they've been weakened (by no coincidence) over the years. Welcome to Feudal Capitalism.
sosborn 9y ago
How do you feel about patent law?
dsacco 9y ago
I think it's perfectly cool, yes. I'm not concerned in the slightest with monopolization from Facebook implementing Snapchat features. Good for them, that must have taken a massive amount of business and engineering coordination.
Eridrus 9y ago
From an ethical perspective, I think the amount of truly unique ideas is actually very, very low, I think most ideas (including all the snapchat UI concepts) have been had by multiple people, so I do not think it makes sense to give people a monopoly on ideas since by doing so you are restricting others who may have even come up with the same idea. The amount of obvious patents vastly outnumbers the amount of non-obvious ones. There is an argument that says that large companies are better at execution, and so will just reap the rewards of other people's ideas, but I think that big companies are actually bad at execution and they are currently benefiting far more from the current legal regime. So, all in all, we should abolish all patent law.
crucifiction 9y ago
Software has always been about copying features, since the very beginning of the industry. With a software product there is always only a short window of having something innovative before others add it to their same products.
mhh__ 9y ago
To someone with knowledge of the law regarding this stuff - Would features like these be patentable?
wolco 9y ago
It might be a good thing long term as snapchat is seen as a market leader. Facebook will react and copy features. But in time they will copy so many it will take them off their primary course of gathering more information for the user ad segment program. Snapchat can offer things facebook can't like privacy and trust that will become increasely important if snapchat can change the conversation through features it will put facebook in a difficult position.

ensiferum 9y ago

And ofc you need this story with some 30-sonething superstars self promoting hotshot CEO who is the capable of coming up with the solution of simply copying the competition.

tomcam 9y ago

Any solution is hard to enforce. Idealistically, the computer world has largely decided cross pollination, while sometimes painful for just the reason you describe, is better for all of us (I agree, and purposely chose not to patent technology that has been worth millions for me and my competitors over the last 17 years).

Nomentatus 9y ago

The law feels it is illegal - but we don't enforce laws meant to limit market power and they've been weakened (by no coincidence) over the years. Welcome to Feudal Capitalism.

sosborn 9y ago

How do you feel about patent law?

dsacco 9y ago

I think it's perfectly cool, yes. I'm not concerned in the slightest with monopolization from Facebook implementing Snapchat features. Good for them, that must have taken a massive amount of business and engineering coordination.

Eridrus 9y ago

From an ethical perspective, I think the amount of truly unique ideas is actually very, very low, I think most ideas (including all the snapchat UI concepts) have been had by multiple people, so I do not think it makes sense to give people a monopoly on ideas since by doing so you are restricting others who may have even come up with the same idea. The amount of obvious patents vastly outnumbers the amount of non-obvious ones. There is an argument that says that large companies are better at execution, and so will just reap the rewards of other people's ideas, but I think that big companies are actually bad at execution and they are currently benefiting far more from the current legal regime. So, all in all, we should abolish all patent law.

crucifiction 9y ago

Software has always been about copying features, since the very beginning of the industry. With a software product there is always only a short window of having something innovative before others add it to their same products.

mhh__ 9y ago

To someone with knowledge of the law regarding this stuff - Would features like these be patentable?

wolco 9y ago

It might be a good thing long term as snapchat is seen as a market leader. Facebook will react and copy features. But in time they will copy so many it will take them off their primary course of gathering more information for the user ad segment program. Snapchat can offer things facebook can't like privacy and trust that will become increasely important if snapchat can change the conversation through features it will put facebook in a difficult position.