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Facebook's Three New Products
- michaelchisari 15y agoGiven their social networking dominance, their swimming pools filled with vc money, and the top engineers working for them, does anyone else feel like Facebook are underachievers? Considering they had to have known about G+ for a while before it launched, you would think they would really hit something out of the park in terms of competitive features. These are all pretty lackluster, imho.
- wccrawford 15y agoG+ launched with Group video chat (in the Hangouts feature) with no fanfare at all, as it if was nothing. FB's announcement today has spent a lot of time talking about how much work it was to implement... It's got to be a huge kick in the pants to them. I kind of feel bad for them.
- kenjackson 15y agoApple does this every release. Marketing is important. Facebook is now the ubiquitous video chat social network, built on Skype. Google+ is Circles on your Gmail. Everything else you say requires some level of convincing.
- nextparadigms 15y agoExcept that Hangout is a lot more social than the Facebook/Skype integration. Google+ has out-social'ed Facebook.
- bonch 15y ago"A lot more social" is pretty vague.
- sunchild 15y agoFacebook is showing the signs of its alliance to Microsoft in more ways than one here.
- kenjackson 15y agoI see one way (using Skype, although apparently that started some time ago). What are the other ways?
- cryptoz 15y agoDownloading .exe files to Linux computers seems to be a very Microsofty thing to do.
- kenjackson 15y agoI SERIOUSLY doubt MS was giving them architectural guidance on how to make this work. Probably would have more to do with the architectural experience of the devs.
- cryptoz 15y agoI wasn't suggesting that MS told them to do that. To my knowledge, this first time that Facebook has left the Web and launched a feature only available to specific OSs by way of desktop applications. Remember that this video chat is not a web page. It's a Microsoft (and Apple? I don't know) desktop application that integrates into their web page. I'm suggesting that Facebook is showing their alliance to Microsoft by ignoring some other OSs and launching Microsoft-powered features. If you include video chat as an integral part of Facebook, then you can no longer call Facebook a web site.
- kenjackson 15y agoThanks. That wasn't clear from your earlier post (and I didn't know that this was a desktop app either).
- kin 15y agoHangouts is group video. Huddle is group text chats, which for some reason is mobile only and has no web interface. No one uses it 'cause not everyone has an Android device.
- wccrawford 15y agoI meant group video chat. Thanks for catching that. I've updated my comment.
- yhlasx 15y agoI've used this video chat feature, well, looks like something done in hurry. Quality kind of sucks
- benbscholz 15y agoThe video features built into gchat have served my needs perfectly. Between hangouts & youtube video sharing, I think google+ is out-shining them at this point in time.
- smackfu 15y agoThe bigger question is still whether people will actually use these things. Where people means greater than 5% of the userbase.
- rokhayakebe 15y agoThe video features built into gchat have served my needs perfectly 1) The average person knows more people on Facebook, then people with a Gmail account. 2) You, and your other geeky friends live in Gmail. The rest of the world lives inside Facebook.
- muuh-gnu 15y agoSo what is your point exactly? That the only reason people will stay on Facebook is that they already are on Facebook? By this logic they never would have gotten on Facebook in the first place, because Facebook started out empty, and everybody already was somwhere else, say MySpace, and ICQ/AIM/YIM/MSN before that.
- rokhayakebe 15y agoSo what is your point exactly? That the only reason people will stay on Facebook is that they already are on Facebook Yes. Your neighbor's mama was never on Myspace, ICQ, AIM, YIM, MSN, and chances are she is not on Gmail video chatting.
- Ryanmf 15y agoThe rest of the world lives inside Facebook. For now. To me, there's exactly one compelling thing about Facebook: It illustrated that normal humans will join and use a social network. Beyond that, I don't see any reason why their adoption patterns will differ from those we've already seen with other humans on other "social" web properties (Hi Livejournal/Facethejury/Friendster et al!). Which is to say, the enthusiastic folks eventually get those who joined begrudgingly involved, everyone has fun for a while, then everyone gets bored and moves on. It's not as if nerds who have SRS PRIVACY CONCERNZ and talk about things like data portability are the only people growing weary of Facebook. An approximate majority of the musicians/DJs/artists I know in real life and on the internet say they hate Facebook but maintain an account for promotional purposes. But they all seem to have really warmed up to Twitter. (Specifically, most in the music crowd seem to have adopted a combination of Twitter and Soundcloud as their primary internet residencies, filling the void where MySpace once resided.) To assume that Facebook will remain the social network of note just because they're Facebook, or just because they got there first (sort of) seems naïve. The network effect will be the primary driver of where we all—geeks and normies alike—end up next. Facebook doesn't really have any control over that. And we've seen that the network effect can linger even after the product has effectively failed (Hi MySpace!), so having the network now may not be a reliable indicator that they'll keep it, even in the very near term. And that leaves the product. Which is fine, I guess. Not that bad, not that great. But when Google announces their first real crack at a genuine social network and it has features no one's even talked about yet, and it's cooked directly into their mobile platform running on about 180 Mm devices worldwide [1][2], Facebook's "awesome" reply, "We've got video chat now," falls flat. To me at least. [1] http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1622614 http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1622614 [2] Android/Google+ and some of the new iOS 5 features along with Apple's Twitter partnership have me semi-convinced that we're moving towards the transparent social network, where membership has much more to do with which smartphone you buy than anything else. I predict that in a competition with Google and Apple/Twitter, Microsoft/Facebook will turn out to be also-rans. Also, poor RIM.
- ssclafani 15y agoFacebook doesn't need to have competitive features they only need to have comparative features. Google+ has video chat, now Facebook does. It doesn't matter that Hangout is better. People don't switch social networks based on any single feature.
- michaelchisari 15y agoDo you really think that attitude will allow them to maintain their dominance?
- pvarangot 15y agoI think the proper question should be "For how long do you really think that attitude will allow them to maintain their dominance?". Maybe Facebook is in the positions where playing catch-up is good enough for them in the midterm.
- grandalf 15y agoWhat do you think Facebook should have built/announced? Pretty much all of the really useful features are also big privacy violators, and with the uncertainty around how the public views social networking privacy, FB is smart to wait and let Google make the first move.
- nextparadigms 15y agoThose who don't innovate, fall behind. Who was it that said companies kill themselves, and it's not the competitors that do it?
- kin 15y agoYou know logic says they won't be able to maintain their dominance but history shows that things don't always follow logically. It's going to be super interesting what plays out next.
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoIMO it won't be their tech or attitude that will bring an eventual end to their dominance but shear fashion. Trend following. If Google position themselves and look cool and capture the "cool kids" then FB will lose out to them (to some extent). FB is already getting a little taint, it's run a good innings in internet time. Whichever, G+ or FB, manages to capture the buzz of "hangouts with famous people" will probably take the current round. This to me is the iteration of one of Twitter's big wins; the chance to rub shoulders with "stars". For me, and I suspect most here, such things don't really matter. I'll stay with FB as long as most of my friends are there and it works reasonably well.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nextparadigms 15y agoI've always thought Facebook was a mediocre looking product at best.
- goatforce5 15y agoYou can call 'em what you want, but I imagine running the second most popular site in the world must feel pretty good.
- MartinCron 15y agoFacebook just works pretty darn well, though. The application is almost always responsive, it's extremely polished, and it's always getting a bit stronger in what it offers. If that's underachieving, sign me up.
- clarkbox 15y ago"Facebook just works pretty darn well" i guess you have never interacted with their platform/api?
- MartinCron 15y agoShallow api integration (like button, send button) just works pretty darn well. You are correct, though. I, along with most people who use facebook, haven't had to do any deeper platform/api integration.
- RobAtticus 15y agoYou're a lucky one I guess, or I'm unlucky. Facebook has constant little issues, whether it's just plain slow, the back button doesn't do anything, clicking a link doesn't do anything, chat is always on the fritz, or some other annoyance.
- masterzora 15y agoI'm curious as to what set of the features you use, because I seem to have chosen a set with the opposite experience: responsiveness is often spotty, polish is lacking, and the offering seems to be getting weaker if anything. That said, maybe the new offerings will help fix some of that, but I'm not particularly sanguine.
- ipince 15y agoI certainly does _not_ work pretty darn well. A couple examples of high-impact bugs: - Repeated posts in the news feed. The first ~10 posts or so in the news feed are repeated as you scroll down. - In the news feed, if I see and play a video, it plays. Great. If I continue going down the feed and then click on a photo, it goes into the "theater" mode, and for some obscure reason, it plays the video again (except I cannot see it; I can only hear it). The only way to stop it is to exit theater mode. This keeps happening over and over again every time I enter theater mode. I am then forced to refresh the entire page if I want to see some pictures without distracting noise in the background. These are just a couple examples; there are many more. After talking to some friends, it seems I'm not the only one experiencing them. Now, nobody's perfect. It's OK if these bugs got into production for a few days or even weeks before getting fixed. But it's been months now... For a company full of brilliant engineers, that is unacceptable.
- phillco 15y agoFacebook's quality seems to be directly linked to their need to acquire users. When they started out they were excellent — I remember being very impressed that a social network could be this nice. Now that everyone uses them, they have no hunger for quality.
- joelrunyon 15y agoThe presentation seemed a little lackluster. It's like FB + Skype were planning a big surprise and then Google dropped a bigger one with G+ last week and FB/Skype were left standing, shouting "us too!" but with a smaller product + feature set.
- jdp23 15y agogreat summary, you nailed both the content and the tone
- guimarin 15y agoIs it me or does Zuckerberg really excel at being boring? I guess I don't watch many CEOs announce new products but that was painfully boring and pedantic.
- wccrawford 15y agoHis voice is a bit whiny, and that isn't helping. But I think it's also the slide-show based presentation. And the repeatedly talking about how awesome his partners and employees are. We get it. We didn't come here for that. We want to be shown the exciting features.
- guimarin 15y agoI understand fully his motives, drum up support and excitement about his IPO, but no matter how hard he tries, he does not have Jobs charisma or skill. He should start getting it by reading Nancy Duarte's books on presentations.
- qq66 15y agoYou assume he wants it. He, and many other successful businessmen, are doing just fine without it.
- canistr 15y agoI don't think it's Zuckerberg. It's just that what they launched today was lackluster and merely a response to G+.
- smackfu 15y agoMost just don't liveblog it. The only point of the presentation is so that a few journalists can feel more privileged over those who get press release saying the same thing.
- dreamux 15y agoWhile I can appreciate (in fact, I probably don't) the technical difficulty of delivering a chat/video service to a userbase of 750M; these simply aren't compelling innovations for most (especially younger) people. Of particular note, these features aren't sticky (the usability of these features is common to _many_ other services) nor do they raise particularly high barriers to entry for competitors (Google has already nailed these services at large scales, integrating them into G+ is probably trivial). What FB (or Google for that matter) needs to nail is social search based on the graph of what your friends are doing/reading/buying... this is one area where FB has a distinct early advantage (they have more mature social graphs). I'm convinced social search will be the single feature that displaces or entrenches FB, not chat.
- guimarin 15y agothis is exactly what www.blekko.com is trying to do.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoI thought what blekko was trying to do was offload the work of building a search index onto its users.
- guimarin 15y agoIndex technology is very well-known and pretty straightforward. You crawl the web. The quality of your search results are a function of your algorithm, and the depth/breadth of your index (created by this crawling). Blekko is attempting to outsource the algorithm part. Rather than play the cat and mouse game with spam sites, why not let power-users define what the best is, and then only return those results to others. Integrating the social graph is actually an incredibly powerful and compelling way to do search.
- matwood 15y agoBasically returning results and ordering by the +1s your social graph has possibly already marked?
- pstack 15y agoI don't see any products, there. I just see a couple of lame features. Skype and group chat. Skype already does Skype, so I'm not sure why I'd load up Facebook just so I could skype through a webpage, instead. My IM client has done group chat for years, so I'm not sure why I'd load up facebook just so I could chat with a group of those people, either. This kind of falls in line with my confusion as to why people ruin their websites with all these components and hooks into Facebook. They claim that they need Facebook Likes and Logins and Discussions in their websites, because Facebook drives traffic. Even if they hate it, they have to succumb to it. You know, for generating traffic. My question remains - why do you want to try appealing to a group of people to whom Facebook is "the internet" and who do everything through Facebook? Those people aren't going to make a point of going to your website again, unless someone links them to it a second time down the road. It seems like a lot of resources (not to mention website screen real-estate) given up for very little desirable return.
- ugh 15y agoIt’s for people who already spend a lot of time on Facebook. They don’t have to bother anymore using dedicated software. Simple as that. You are looking at it from the wrong perspective.
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoHe's clearly being purposefully obstructive in his comments. Obviously if you're on FB already then why open Skype, why open an IM client, that's how integration works. The parent is asking the equivalent of why you'd add maps to google when you have a perfectly good road map out in the car.
- WalterSear 15y agoTypical parent.
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoLol. I should know, I am one.
- wallnutboy 15y agoMy god, Mark really isn't that good at this CEO schtick is he.
- ThomPete 15y agoIt's interesting. The very first feature they show. Is the one that Skype implemented which a lot of people hated. Personally I think it's a great great feature. But it is a feature.
- marcamillion 15y agoMeh. Nothing much to see here. This looks like Google Chat - video calling, group chat, seeing who you last spoke to.
- username3 15y agoGet started at http://www.facebook.com/videocalling http://www.facebook.com/videocalling
- mike-cardwell 15y agoWhat? This is their "awesome" announcement? Is this some sort of a joke? Even techies aren't going to be interested in this, let alone normal users...
- juliano_q 15y agoUnfortunately, I think it flows the other way. "Normal" users will probably use it, and some techies may use it too just because their "normal" friends use it. I think I will never use it because I almost dont use video chat (Hangout can change that) but I see my mother using it to talk with her sisters. She currently uses Skype, but using only Facebook will be much easier for her.
- badclient 15y agoWhat's the end game? MS acquires fb? Skype makes a killing off fb users for premium subscription and gives fb a cut?
- Apocryphon 15y agoLooks like video chat is the hot new battleground again. Facebook Skype vs. video GChat vs. Apple FaceTime/iChat/iMessage vs. Microsoft Skype(?)
- canistr 15y agoAnd it looks like it's going to converge as a space race towards mobile video chat.
- togasystems 15y agoMicrosoft Skype just partnered with Facebook .... and Twitter will use Apple FaceTime ...
- canistr 15y agoIt should also be noted that Facebook chat works within Windows Live Messenger 2011 and you receive Facebook notifications (or birthday updates) from within Hotmail. So Microsoft has been working with Facebook for some time now.
- Apocryphon 15y agoThey're forming tagteams? I wonder if any other partnerships will emerge. I also said Microsoft Skype to distinguish it from FB- didn't know that FB and MS have been collaborating. But on second thought, it really is going to be Microsoft Skype from here on out. Or rather, 2012 Microsoft Skype Home Edition 7 with .NET Windows Live integration.
- Apocryphon 15y agoWait a second: what does Twitter even have to do with video conferencing?
- ww520 15y agoThis actually has piqued my interest. I'll try to build a video chat app as my next quarterly app push. I'll let you guys know how it goes.
- rokhayakebe 15y agoSkype has just handed over their business just as AOL did with their search engine.
- smackfu 15y agoFor those drawing comparisons: Facebook has 500 million users. How many does Google+ have?
- nkassis 15y agoThat's not even worth wasting time at answering. Look Google doing a great job of rebranding it's services. Google already had video chat for a while now. If you have gmail you have video chat. I don't get why facebook is just getting around to doing it. And google didn't need skype to do it.
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- shoota 15y agoGrandCentral was the voicemail service they purchased and has nothing to do with video chat.
- websymphony 15y agoNaah, GrandCentral became Google Voice. Totally different product.
- p0ppe 15y agoFacebook actually has 750 million active users, according to the press conference today. They've also updated their Statistics page to reflect that; https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
- kragen 15y agoOn the order of 200 000. Mark Zuckerberg has 44871 followers on Google+, so there are clearly at least 44871 users, but probably not more than a few times that. Yesterday, though, he had 35000 followers. That growth rate clearly can't continue; at that rate, + would overtake FB in another month or two, and the entire world population 5 days later.
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- Newky 15y agoAlso, I went with the setup, and not only did facebook not support linux, it doesn't detect I'm on a linux system and started to download a .EXE file! Feeling some pressure from google + ?
- nubela 15y agosame thing. i thought that was complete fail on their end. a .exe? come on.
- Newky 15y agoNot even as much as a "Sorry your operating system isn't supported at this stage!" watch this space type message, just an in your face EXE download! Used to being a second class citizen but most sites of recent years have a recognizer at the very least!
- rryan 15y agoAnd GTalk 1-1 video chat and Google+ Hangouts both support Linux perfectly... looks like Google wins this user's eyeballs.
- cphang 15y agoIt detected my Mac OS X just fine, asked me to execute a Java Applet and then make my Firefox crashed. I restarted Facebook using Chromium and stared a Video Call. It works like charm.
- togasystems 15y agoWhat does this mean for all of the group chat companies that have launched recently?
- brudgers 15y agoDespite all of the hype about video chat and circles versus lists, to me the big announcement looks like group chat - which seems kind of stupidly obvious. Thinking about it, Google may have missed the mark by throwing video into the equation - unlike is the case with video, when people don't have to get dressed to be part of a discussion based on text. It almost looks like Google heard that Facebook was working on group features and video and assumed that they would be integrated.
- tghw 15y agoI may be mistaken, but I think that's part of the idea with G+; you post an update to a specific circle and you basically have a chat with that circle.
- brudgers 15y ago[IHNBITG+] My understanding Circles aren't reciprocal, so I don't really see how circles could map onto group chat.
- RobAtticus 15y agoGmail has had group chat for a long time. G+ has it on the mobile app, and really you could join a hangout and use the text chat feature for group chat as well (even without a mic/webcam). I'm not sure why the G+ in-browser gchat doesn't support group chat, but I would guess it probably will.
- ConstantineXVI 15y agoIt does, it has a little "Add Person" button in chat windows. Same as Gmail does.
- RobAtticus 15y agoSo it does. I have it signed out (I don't need my gchat's going to 4 different places), so I turned it on briefly and failed to notice that. Thanks for pointing that out!
- tomp 15y agoFinally, the monopoly is over. Long live competition!
- yhlasx 15y agoLet's just stop predicting things and see what happens. I guess everyone had enough Groupon, Bitcoin and G+ vs FB stories.
- JustinHoffman 15y agothis is PATHETIC. too little, too late. facebook is fucked.
- toddy 15y agoOK, the question I have here is about monetization. Who will get more money from this deal - Facebook or Microsoft/Skype and how? Skype has not been profitable for so many years (although they charge for phone calls and have ads), and I don't see this moving it closer to the goal. Also, if FB allows group video-chat for free why would I pay Skype the subscription fee - I will just call from Facebook.
- Zakuzaa 15y agoSkype has been profitable, I think.
- toddy 15y agoNo. Skype lost ~$7M last year and has close to $700M in debt. This was the biggest objection on the price MS paid to acquire it. See http://mashable.com/2011/05/10/microsoft-acquires-skype/ http://mashable.com/2011/05/10/microsoft-acquires-skype/
- bennesvig 15y agoThe video chat feature will ensure that my Facebook chat stays closed so random people don't pop up wanting to video chat.
- kragen 15y agoWell, so now we know why Google+ launched last week. Doesn't look like they do group videochat? Group chat is really, really important. But it's what we've always used Facebook for; it was just structured as "comment threads".
- VuongN 15y agoBringing Your Friends to Bing: Search Now More Social is one of the popular stories. I'm not sure if I trust that list of "popular stories"
- mun2mun 15y agoDoes it mean that skype just got 750 million p2p node?
- hippich 15y agoquote from one commenter: "It sucks! Ask me to download an EXE , while I am in GNU/linux. It is shitty M$ stuff."
- philfreo 15y agohttps://www.facebook.com/notes/philip-su/building-video-calling/10150229123673920 https://www.facebook.com/notes/philip-su/building-video-call... "Although I was the only full-time engineer on the video calling project, I had help from Paul Shen, Rahul Iyer, and Vijaye Raji."
- minikomi 15y agoThat's ... strikingly familiar.
- callmeed 15y agoDownload and install a .jar file for Mac users? Yeah, my mom is gonna choose that over FaceTime ...
- rnernento 15y agoPretty unimpressive... Don't they have some of the greatest minds in the world working on this stuff?
- Creyels 15y agoI think it's quiet interesting how quickly things change and how you see companies differently and google reinvented their image in such a short period of time. If you asked me a year ago if I would say which was the cooler, younger, more innovative and most promising company - Google or Facebook - I would have said 4:0 Facebook for sure. Now, I would say: Cooler? I have a passion for design - so Google+ is by far winner here. In addition, you can say what you want, but with the invitation restriction they got what they wanted - buzzed. Younger? When you compare the new design from Google to the Facebook design and consider the implementation of cutting edge web technology (advanced html5 etc.) - for sure it's google! More innovative? Of course Facebook has a point for focusing the development of a framework in which other companies can build on - but on the other hand, that's by definition not much innovation by themselves - so google+! Most promising? Only time can tell.. I don't know exactly why I see Google in a whole new light now. Maybe it's because of their stunning design and UX (sorry for repeating, but it's gorgeous), maybe it's because of their underdog position with Google+ or maybe it's because Facebook with it's dry and subtle and boring design and it's cooperations with "uncool" players like microsoft is not taking risks anymore. They cannot risk their large userbase and got to stay mainstream. That could be the chance for Google+ to conquer, at least, the younger crowd.
- minikomi 15y agoThe comment stream is interesting, particulary because I've been seeing a lot of "google + hasn't made any impact outside tech circles" type comments around the place. People are looking at this just as Google would like them too.