5 ms·

Flipboard failure: Why are reviews ignoring the problems?

11 points by abennett 16y ago

dlokshin 16y ago
Not surprised at all that few people are talking about the problems that Fliboard is having. Most of the people reviewing are early adopting techies (Scoble, techcrunch). They understand the and are forgiving of the problems that come with launching as a startup (think of Twitter or Mint). They care much more about the product and whether or not it has value in their daily lives. Seems they're unanimously agreeing that it does in fact hold value.
- Farimani2 16y ago
  Well that would be ok if it were slow or worked most of the time. It just doesn't work! Anyway, it's a decent product but not a big deal. The main issue is that technical journalism has stopped being journalism and has become a slave to the PR ecosystem. Journalism is a cornerstone of a free society and unfortunately, at least when it comes to reporting on technical products and services, it's controlled by PR programs. Flipboard is not a 2 man garage startup. It raised 10+M to write a page flipping UI. They did a great job of their PR launch though!
  - eli 16y ago
    Would you still read a technical publication that never got early press releases (so was always a day late to big announcements) or reviewer devices because they spat on all the PR flaks?
    - Farimani2 16y ago
      eli, no i wouldn't. but the coverage on this product is imbalanced for a product that isn't working yet. PR is good and necessary.
thenduks 16y ago
I don't get the problem. The app is great, they are having launch/growing pains. That much is true, to be sure, but would you write an article about how great twitter is and then be sure to write but I occasionally get the fail-whale!? I don't think so, it dates your article severely and isn't really relevant to the quality of the product. Next week (or soon, anyway) things will smooth out. Review the app on it's functionality/style/etc not on the short-comings of it's server infrastructure. The latter is a detail that can be fixed pretty easily while the former is pretty permanent.
- Terretta 16y ago
  > Review the app on it's functionality/style/etc not on the short-comings of it's server infrastructure. The latter is a detail that can be fixed pretty easily while the former is pretty permanent. Was this missing a "/sarcasm"? This seems like the most recklessly harmful remark I've read on Hacker News in ages. Ideas are easy; implementation—especially in iron—is hard. It matters, and it's exponentially harder post launch. > would you write an article about how great twitter is and then be sure to write but I occasionally get the fail-whale!? I don't think so, it dates your article severely and isn't really relevant to the quality of the product Mashable would, two days ago, on 21 July 2010: http://mashable.com/2010/07/21/twitter-scalability/ http://mashable.com/2010/07/21/twitter-scalability/ To quote this "severely dated" article: > "[Twitter] must first and most importantly achieve an acceptable uptime ratio. All the partnerships, revenue and media buzz in the world can fall a bit flat when the app itself doesn’t work."
  - thenduks 16y ago
    I think you're taking a bit of a leap with what I said. I'm not saying it's only the idea that is important at all, I'd be the first to argue that ideas are actually worth next to nothing by themselves. What I was trying to say was that their idea and their implementation are solid -- specifically I'm saying the part of the implementation that counts is solid. Server infrastructure problems are a minor detail compared to the app itself IMO. And to the last part about the mashable article... I would absolutely say that article is 'severely dating' itself. Twitter isn't going anywhere (again IMO) and some server problems aren't going to change that. In a year that article will be a slightly less embarrassing "no one will ever need more than 640k of memory" piece of writing.
minalecs 16y ago
I think if you're saying its a fail, because they couldn't handle traffic based on their press release then this is not a fail. This is actually a great validation for them , that people are interested in their product. On the other hand if you read about how they are scraping content, and possibly violating copyright of other sites.. then this could be an issue.
- smackfu 16y ago
  It seems fairly similar to a new website launch that crashes under the traffic. Sure you have eyeballs but they just think "oh yeah, that thing is junk" and tell everyone that. The only advantage for an app is that people might still have it downloaded when they want to try it again. If they don't delete it immediately (and rate it 1 star in the popup).
illumin8 16y ago
Actually, this angst about the app not working might be better directed towards Twitter, who throttles API connections to maintain performance. Flipboard can't help it that the demand of users that want to receive tweets through their app is higher than Twitter allows. This article should have just said "twitter fails" and it would be more accurate.
- camwest 16y ago
  I think this is more about the fact that Flipboard processes the tweets on their own servers. I don't think the twitter api throttling is a factor.
  - illumin8 16y ago
    I see. The message I got from Flipboard app made it sound like they had exceeded their time-based quota of Twitter API traffic, but it makes sense that perhaps it is the Flipboard servers that are getting too much traffic.
- smackfu 16y ago
  Other iPad Twitter clients have no problem with throttling. I guess they should have done client-side processing, rather than server-side.

11 points by abennett 16y ago

Not surprised at all that few people are talking about the problems that Fliboard is having. Most of the people reviewing are early adopting techies (Scoble, techcrunch). They understand the and are forgiving of the problems that come with launching as a startup (think of Twitter or Mint). They care much more about the product and whether or not it has value in their daily lives. Seems they're unanimously agreeing that it does in fact hold value.

Farimani2 16y ago
Well that would be ok if it were slow or worked most of the time. It just doesn't work! Anyway, it's a decent product but not a big deal. The main issue is that technical journalism has stopped being journalism and has become a slave to the PR ecosystem. Journalism is a cornerstone of a free society and unfortunately, at least when it comes to reporting on technical products and services, it's controlled by PR programs. Flipboard is not a 2 man garage startup. It raised 10+M to write a page flipping UI. They did a great job of their PR launch though!
- eli 16y ago
  Would you still read a technical publication that never got early press releases (so was always a day late to big announcements) or reviewer devices because they spat on all the PR flaks?
  - Farimani2 16y ago
    eli, no i wouldn't. but the coverage on this product is imbalanced for a product that isn't working yet. PR is good and necessary.

thenduks 16y ago

I don't get the problem. The app is great, they are having launch/growing pains. That much is true, to be sure, but would you write an article about how great twitter is and then be sure to write but I occasionally get the fail-whale!? I don't think so, it dates your article severely and isn't really relevant to the quality of the product. Next week (or soon, anyway) things will smooth out. Review the app on it's functionality/style/etc not on the short-comings of it's server infrastructure. The latter is a detail that can be fixed pretty easily while the former is pretty permanent.

Terretta 16y ago
> Review the app on it's functionality/style/etc not on the short-comings of it's server infrastructure. The latter is a detail that can be fixed pretty easily while the former is pretty permanent. Was this missing a "/sarcasm"? This seems like the most recklessly harmful remark I've read on Hacker News in ages. Ideas are easy; implementation—especially in iron—is hard. It matters, and it's exponentially harder post launch. > would you write an article about how great twitter is and then be sure to write but I occasionally get the fail-whale!? I don't think so, it dates your article severely and isn't really relevant to the quality of the product Mashable would, two days ago, on 21 July 2010: http://mashable.com/2010/07/21/twitter-scalability/ http://mashable.com/2010/07/21/twitter-scalability/ To quote this "severely dated" article: > "[Twitter] must first and most importantly achieve an acceptable uptime ratio. All the partnerships, revenue and media buzz in the world can fall a bit flat when the app itself doesn’t work."
- thenduks 16y ago
  I think you're taking a bit of a leap with what I said. I'm not saying it's only the idea that is important at all, I'd be the first to argue that ideas are actually worth next to nothing by themselves. What I was trying to say was that their idea and their implementation are solid -- specifically I'm saying the part of the implementation that counts is solid. Server infrastructure problems are a minor detail compared to the app itself IMO. And to the last part about the mashable article... I would absolutely say that article is 'severely dating' itself. Twitter isn't going anywhere (again IMO) and some server problems aren't going to change that. In a year that article will be a slightly less embarrassing "no one will ever need more than 640k of memory" piece of writing.

minalecs 16y ago

I think if you're saying its a fail, because they couldn't handle traffic based on their press release then this is not a fail. This is actually a great validation for them , that people are interested in their product. On the other hand if you read about how they are scraping content, and possibly violating copyright of other sites.. then this could be an issue.

smackfu 16y ago
It seems fairly similar to a new website launch that crashes under the traffic. Sure you have eyeballs but they just think "oh yeah, that thing is junk" and tell everyone that. The only advantage for an app is that people might still have it downloaded when they want to try it again. If they don't delete it immediately (and rate it 1 star in the popup).

illumin8 16y ago

Actually, this angst about the app not working might be better directed towards Twitter, who throttles API connections to maintain performance. Flipboard can't help it that the demand of users that want to receive tweets through their app is higher than Twitter allows. This article should have just said "twitter fails" and it would be more accurate.

camwest 16y ago
I think this is more about the fact that Flipboard processes the tweets on their own servers. I don't think the twitter api throttling is a factor.
- illumin8 16y ago
  I see. The message I got from Flipboard app made it sound like they had exceeded their time-based quota of Twitter API traffic, but it makes sense that perhaps it is the Flipboard servers that are getting too much traffic.
smackfu 16y ago
Other iPad Twitter clients have no problem with throttling. I guess they should have done client-side processing, rather than server-side.