7 ms·

Given their social networking dominance, their swimming pools filled with vc money, and the top engineers working for them, does anyone else feel like Facebook

Given 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 ago
G+ 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 ago
  Apple 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 ago
    Except 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 ago
    Facebook is showing the signs of its alliance to Microsoft in more ways than one here.
    - kenjackson 15y ago
      I see one way (using Skype, although apparently that started some time ago). What are the other ways?
      - cryptoz 15y ago
        Downloading .exe files to Linux computers seems to be a very Microsofty thing to do.
        kenjackson 15y ago
        I 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 ago
        I 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 ago
        Thanks. That wasn't clear from your earlier post (and I didn't know that this was a desktop app either).
        cryptoz 15y ago
        :) To be fair, G+'s Hangouts is also currently a desktop app (requires the Gtalk plugin I think). I suspect Google will move away from that and go towards a full web page. We'll see. This is all so exciting.
- kin 15y ago
  Hangouts 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 ago
    I meant group video chat. Thanks for catching that. I've updated my comment.
- yhlasx 15y ago
  I've used this video chat feature, well, looks like something done in hurry. Quality kind of sucks
benbscholz 15y ago
The 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 ago
  The bigger question is still whether people will actually use these things. Where people means greater than 5% of the userbase.
- rokhayakebe 15y ago
  The 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 ago
    So 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 ago
      So 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 ago
    The 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 ago
Facebook 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 ago
  Do you really think that attitude will allow them to maintain their dominance?
  - pvarangot 15y ago
    I 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 ago
    What 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 ago
      Those 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 ago
    You 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 ago
    IMO 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 ago
I've always thought Facebook was a mediocre looking product at best.
goatforce5 15y ago
You can call 'em what you want, but I imagine running the second most popular site in the world must feel pretty good.
MartinCron 15y ago
Facebook 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 ago
    Shallow 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 ago
  You'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 ago
  I'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 ago
  I 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 ago
Facebook'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 ago
The 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 ago
  great summary, you nailed both the content and the tone

wccrawford 15y ago

G+ 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 ago
Apple 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 ago
  Except 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 ago
  Facebook is showing the signs of its alliance to Microsoft in more ways than one here.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    I see one way (using Skype, although apparently that started some time ago). What are the other ways?
    - cryptoz 15y ago
      Downloading .exe files to Linux computers seems to be a very Microsofty thing to do.
      - kenjackson 15y ago
        I 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 ago
        I 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 ago
        Thanks. That wasn't clear from your earlier post (and I didn't know that this was a desktop app either).
        cryptoz 15y ago
        :) To be fair, G+'s Hangouts is also currently a desktop app (requires the Gtalk plugin I think). I suspect Google will move away from that and go towards a full web page. We'll see. This is all so exciting.
kin 15y ago
Hangouts 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 ago
  I meant group video chat. Thanks for catching that. I've updated my comment.
yhlasx 15y ago
I've used this video chat feature, well, looks like something done in hurry. Quality kind of sucks

benbscholz 15y ago

The 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 ago
The bigger question is still whether people will actually use these things. Where people means greater than 5% of the userbase.
rokhayakebe 15y ago
The 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 ago
  So 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 ago
    So 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 ago
  The 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 ago

Facebook 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 ago
Do you really think that attitude will allow them to maintain their dominance?
- pvarangot 15y ago
  I 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 ago
  What 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 ago
    Those 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 ago
  You 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 ago
  IMO 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 ago

I've always thought Facebook was a mediocre looking product at best.

goatforce5 15y ago

You can call 'em what you want, but I imagine running the second most popular site in the world must feel pretty good.

MartinCron 15y ago

Facebook 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 ago
  Shallow 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 ago
You'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 ago
I'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 ago
I 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 ago

Facebook'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 ago

The 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 ago
great summary, you nailed both the content and the tone