6 ms·

"Some pundits are complaining that the technology is not new, but that’s besides the point. Case in point: at MySpace we launched what Zuckerberg is announcing

by flyt 15y ago

"Some pundits are complaining that the technology is not new, but that’s besides the point. Case in point: at MySpace we launched what Zuckerberg is announcing in 2007 (try googling “myspace skype partnership”), and MySpace also had one-on-one video chat back in 2004. The point is that people weren’t really ready for it back then—now is the time, and Facebook has the user base. The large user base (750 million) paired with a simple integration of arguably the best voice/video tech (Skype) is what makes this news." -Tom Anderson, founder of MySpace http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/06/zuckerberg-first-public-response-to-google-plus/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/06/zuckerberg-first-public-res...

kenjackson 15y ago
Tom gets it. One of the problems with experience is that you have, well umm, experience. It's the unfortunate ability to say, "We did video chat X years ago. Didn't work out, it's a bad idea." I've seen this type of thinking first hand. You must understand why it didn't work before, and what is different now. I can see people at MS saying, "The iPad will never work. We tried tablets w/o keyboards back in 2002 and everyone wanted convertibles. It'll never work." Little differences can be a big deal. Experience is not useful w/o the analysis to put your experience in perspective.
- timjahn 15y ago
  Agreed. I love Tom's overall tone in that article.
  - bproper 15y ago
    I love that a 4 year old news story is on the front page of Hacker news and inspiring a deep discussion.
    - timjahn 15y ago
      History is full of deep discussions. ;)
- msbarnett 15y ago
  While it's certainly true that past performance of a technology is not a flawless indicator of future success, I'm not clear on what makes "now" the time for video chat. With the iPad, Apple's key insight was that tablets had sucked because the OS hadn't been meticulously tuned to afford use on tablets. I'm curious as to what people think the key insight is that Facebook is bringing to video chat? From what I'm reading here the TC author seems to think that Joe Average User wasn't using skype or stickam or any of the previous offerings for video chat because the user base wasn't there. I don't know about that, because all of my friends have had skype forever and I can count the number of times I've video chatted with them on one finger. I feel like I wasn't using those, and won't be using this, not because the user base wasn't FIXNUM huge, but because it feels intrusive and I don't want to feel like I have to shower, shave, and put on presentable clothes just to tool around on Facebook.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    A big reason why Skype wasn't big on MySpace was that it wasn't seamless to use -- at least from my vague recollection didn't it require users to download MySpaceIM? That alone makes it a non-starter for a lot of people. The other issue is that MySpace never reached this critical mass of users that Facebook has. I can see video chat being about Facebook, more than Skype over the next year. "Get on Facebook so we can video chat". Lastly, broadband penetration and bandwidth is that much better since 2007.
    - guptaneil 15y ago
      Facebook still requires downloading a plugin to use video chat, so it has the same barrier to entry. I don't see being able to video chat from within my facebook.com window instead of in my Skype.app window as being a huge advantage. Case in point: I told my younger sister about Facebook's announcement today, and she didn't really care since she already had Skype to video chat with her friends. Then I told her about Google+'s Hangout feature and her eyes lit up. Video chatting is no longer a killer feature, but group video chatting is as long as Skype maintains premium pricing for group chats.
- barista 15y ago
  That's like Microsoft saying that they did tablets well before Apple did iPad. Though true, the experience of thoese two devices is vastly different. Windows 8 looks very promising though...
- MartinCron 15y ago
  I once worked at a smallish company that had been around for 20 years. In that time, they had tried just about everything and had failed at most things. It was very frustrating to work with people who considered things like test automation, normalized database structures, not copying and pasting to be discredited concepts.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

by flyt 15y ago

kenjackson 15y ago

Tom gets it. One of the problems with experience is that you have, well umm, experience. It's the unfortunate ability to say, "We did video chat X years ago. Didn't work out, it's a bad idea." I've seen this type of thinking first hand. You must understand why it didn't work before, and what is different now. I can see people at MS saying, "The iPad will never work. We tried tablets w/o keyboards back in 2002 and everyone wanted convertibles. It'll never work." Little differences can be a big deal. Experience is not useful w/o the analysis to put your experience in perspective.

timjahn 15y ago
Agreed. I love Tom's overall tone in that article.
- bproper 15y ago
  I love that a 4 year old news story is on the front page of Hacker news and inspiring a deep discussion.
  - timjahn 15y ago
    History is full of deep discussions. ;)
msbarnett 15y ago
While it's certainly true that past performance of a technology is not a flawless indicator of future success, I'm not clear on what makes "now" the time for video chat. With the iPad, Apple's key insight was that tablets had sucked because the OS hadn't been meticulously tuned to afford use on tablets. I'm curious as to what people think the key insight is that Facebook is bringing to video chat? From what I'm reading here the TC author seems to think that Joe Average User wasn't using skype or stickam or any of the previous offerings for video chat because the user base wasn't there. I don't know about that, because all of my friends have had skype forever and I can count the number of times I've video chatted with them on one finger. I feel like I wasn't using those, and won't be using this, not because the user base wasn't FIXNUM huge, but because it feels intrusive and I don't want to feel like I have to shower, shave, and put on presentable clothes just to tool around on Facebook.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  A big reason why Skype wasn't big on MySpace was that it wasn't seamless to use -- at least from my vague recollection didn't it require users to download MySpaceIM? That alone makes it a non-starter for a lot of people. The other issue is that MySpace never reached this critical mass of users that Facebook has. I can see video chat being about Facebook, more than Skype over the next year. "Get on Facebook so we can video chat". Lastly, broadband penetration and bandwidth is that much better since 2007.
  - guptaneil 15y ago
    Facebook still requires downloading a plugin to use video chat, so it has the same barrier to entry. I don't see being able to video chat from within my facebook.com window instead of in my Skype.app window as being a huge advantage. Case in point: I told my younger sister about Facebook's announcement today, and she didn't really care since she already had Skype to video chat with her friends. Then I told her about Google+'s Hangout feature and her eyes lit up. Video chatting is no longer a killer feature, but group video chatting is as long as Skype maintains premium pricing for group chats.
barista 15y ago
That's like Microsoft saying that they did tablets well before Apple did iPad. Though true, the experience of thoese two devices is vastly different. Windows 8 looks very promising though...
MartinCron 15y ago
I once worked at a smallish company that had been around for 20 years. In that time, they had tried just about everything and had failed at most things. It was very frustrating to work with people who considered things like test automation, normalized database structures, not copying and pasting to be discredited concepts.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]