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I remember when Facebook Platform came out. The super early version where you could embed your app on Facebook and engage with the social graph. I thought dang

I remember when Facebook Platform came out. The super early version where you could embed your app on Facebook and engage with the social graph. I thought dang, this is smart. They’ll basically own the next level up the stack from the browser: they’ll own the “social chrome” of every application on the web. Although it devolved into spam, Facebook was a hot spot of weird social games for a while there. And every web dev was learning how to build Facebook apps. We wondered if we’d even really need a domain for much more than a landing page, if 99% of our engagement was going to come through Facebooks. And then they killed it because they wanted to own the entire experience inside Facebook. It became not a walled garden, but a walled flower pot. It always seemed short sighted to me. Yes, they lost control allowing third party apps in their frame. But didn’t they want to be a Microsoft and not a WordPerfect? Looking back, I wonder if it was a missed opportunity. They have to go try to be the metaverse because social never became a platform.

scarface74 5y ago
They killed it because it didn’t work on mobile.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Maybe their desktop traffic wouldn't have tanked so much if they'd kept it a richer experience, and continue to enrich it. Instead they abandoned it completely once traffic patterns tipped towards mobile.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    How many people really use desktops that much in 2021 for personal use? Facebook is already seen as being “for old people”.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      78% of homes have a computer in them. [0] I don't know anyone who does not use a PC for personal use, and my non-work social circles are not at all techie dominated. Also I'm not talking about 2021: I'm talking about years ago when Facebook moved away from prioritizing the PC platform. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, I don't know, but when FB became a primary entry point to the internet for many people, and FB then mostly ignored desktop experience, it certainly accelerated any decline already in place. But had they enriched that experience, maybe there'd still be a much stronger following there. [0]https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/computer-internet-use.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/computer...
      - scarface74 5y ago
        55% of all web traffic worldwide comes from mobile. https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-... And considering that most people spend 8 hours a day at work, how much personal usage on the web comes from the desktop? How many younger people are using computers for personal use - especially if it a shared family computer. Heck I am a software developer and my personal computer is just sitting in a corner as a Plex server. I haven’t used it for anything productive in a year and a half and that was for updating my resume. Besides that, Facebook got more popular because of mobile when everyone had a camera in their pocket with GPS when they csn post the highlights of their life. Not to mention WhatsApp is all about communicating real time and Instagram is about sharing pictures.
        ipaddr 5y ago
        So you do no personal development on a desktop? Do you use your work's equipment? Are you using your phone? I have three desktops on the go all day. Three keyboards in front of me and three mice. I run Windows 7, 10 and ubuntu and another ubuntu under windows 10. Trading that in for my mobile is very limiting.
        scarface74 5y ago
- cheriot 5y ago
  Then they lacked the imagination. The Facebook app would have become a web browser where Facebook controls user auth, contacts and then payments. Big $$$
  - scarface74 5y ago
    By 2009, Apple and Amazon already had more credit cards on file than any other company in the US if not the world. In Apple’s case because of iTunes, before the App Store and Amazon because Amazon. Why would you use FB for payments when you were probably either shopping on Amazon, Apple or EBay using PayPal?
    - cheriot 5y ago
      In this path, people would be interacting with games/content in Facebook "apps" that are effectively mobile web pages. Facebook would have control inside their garden. As soon as any Facebook app convinced a user to pay, all other facebook apps would have a seamless checkout. Getting user financials isn't easy but we've seen the rise of Venmo, Robinhood, and Neobanks since then so it's doable.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        By 2009, mobile was clearly the future. But the phones were underpowered and didn’t run web pages well. Even today, most of the world is browsing the internet on low end phones where the web provides a sub par experience. Desktop penetration is lower outside of the US. Aren’t Internet cafes still a thing in much of the world because people don’t have computers at home?
        cheriot 5y ago
        I think internet cafe's are pretty old school everywhere now. Anecdotally, much of the developing world leapfrogged the US on mobile/fintech. People had low end smart phones and banked with their phone carriers 5+ years ago in East Africa. Latest anecdote (this week) is not seeing internet cafe's in Belize and government PSA's say to contact them on whatsapp. That said, Facebook makes their money in rich countries.
freewizard 5y ago
"Social Chrome" is a base of moving sand, just like Google AMP, it works for a brief while via platform's power but will phase out; web game died out naturally with devices becomes cheaper, and consumers going mobile (and consoles).
danudey 5y ago
I kind of miss those awful games, honestly. There was one my girlfriend at the time was playing, and I thought it was interesting but kind of tedious, the UI reacted too slow, etc. So I opened up my editor and wrote a Python client to automate the game; go to forest, attack until your inventory is full, go to town, sell inventory, repeat. I left it run overnight and completely blew past her in progression. Now everything is an app, and every app uses HTTPS, and every HTTPS connection uses certificate pinning, and I just can't be bothered to do the work anymore to cheat at useless games I don't like.
- DanHulton 5y ago
  I'm still playing one, actually: https://www.mousehuntgame.com https://www.mousehuntgame.com. They transitioned to just being a web game that runs in a FB frame for users that still wanted to play it there, but I haven't had an FB account for years now, and I can still play right at the URL. "Interesting but kind of tedious" is absolutely a great descriptor, though. It's basically an incremental game that grows at the slowest possible rate you can imagine.

scarface74 5y ago

They killed it because it didn’t work on mobile.

ineedasername 5y ago
Maybe their desktop traffic wouldn't have tanked so much if they'd kept it a richer experience, and continue to enrich it. Instead they abandoned it completely once traffic patterns tipped towards mobile.
- scarface74 5y ago
  How many people really use desktops that much in 2021 for personal use? Facebook is already seen as being “for old people”.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    78% of homes have a computer in them. [0] I don't know anyone who does not use a PC for personal use, and my non-work social circles are not at all techie dominated. Also I'm not talking about 2021: I'm talking about years ago when Facebook moved away from prioritizing the PC platform. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, I don't know, but when FB became a primary entry point to the internet for many people, and FB then mostly ignored desktop experience, it certainly accelerated any decline already in place. But had they enriched that experience, maybe there'd still be a much stronger following there. [0]https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/computer-internet-use.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/computer...
    - scarface74 5y ago
      55% of all web traffic worldwide comes from mobile. https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-... And considering that most people spend 8 hours a day at work, how much personal usage on the web comes from the desktop? How many younger people are using computers for personal use - especially if it a shared family computer. Heck I am a software developer and my personal computer is just sitting in a corner as a Plex server. I haven’t used it for anything productive in a year and a half and that was for updating my resume. Besides that, Facebook got more popular because of mobile when everyone had a camera in their pocket with GPS when they csn post the highlights of their life. Not to mention WhatsApp is all about communicating real time and Instagram is about sharing pictures.
      - ipaddr 5y ago
        So you do no personal development on a desktop? Do you use your work's equipment? Are you using your phone? I have three desktops on the go all day. Three keyboards in front of me and three mice. I run Windows 7, 10 and ubuntu and another ubuntu under windows 10. Trading that in for my mobile is very limiting.
        scarface74 5y ago
cheriot 5y ago
Then they lacked the imagination. The Facebook app would have become a web browser where Facebook controls user auth, contacts and then payments. Big $$$
- scarface74 5y ago
  By 2009, Apple and Amazon already had more credit cards on file than any other company in the US if not the world. In Apple’s case because of iTunes, before the App Store and Amazon because Amazon. Why would you use FB for payments when you were probably either shopping on Amazon, Apple or EBay using PayPal?
  - cheriot 5y ago
    In this path, people would be interacting with games/content in Facebook "apps" that are effectively mobile web pages. Facebook would have control inside their garden. As soon as any Facebook app convinced a user to pay, all other facebook apps would have a seamless checkout. Getting user financials isn't easy but we've seen the rise of Venmo, Robinhood, and Neobanks since then so it's doable.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      By 2009, mobile was clearly the future. But the phones were underpowered and didn’t run web pages well. Even today, most of the world is browsing the internet on low end phones where the web provides a sub par experience. Desktop penetration is lower outside of the US. Aren’t Internet cafes still a thing in much of the world because people don’t have computers at home?
      - cheriot 5y ago
        I think internet cafe's are pretty old school everywhere now. Anecdotally, much of the developing world leapfrogged the US on mobile/fintech. People had low end smart phones and banked with their phone carriers 5+ years ago in East Africa. Latest anecdote (this week) is not seeing internet cafe's in Belize and government PSA's say to contact them on whatsapp. That said, Facebook makes their money in rich countries.

freewizard 5y ago

"Social Chrome" is a base of moving sand, just like Google AMP, it works for a brief while via platform's power but will phase out; web game died out naturally with devices becomes cheaper, and consumers going mobile (and consoles).

danudey 5y ago

I kind of miss those awful games, honestly. There was one my girlfriend at the time was playing, and I thought it was interesting but kind of tedious, the UI reacted too slow, etc. So I opened up my editor and wrote a Python client to automate the game; go to forest, attack until your inventory is full, go to town, sell inventory, repeat. I left it run overnight and completely blew past her in progression. Now everything is an app, and every app uses HTTPS, and every HTTPS connection uses certificate pinning, and I just can't be bothered to do the work anymore to cheat at useless games I don't like.

DanHulton 5y ago
I'm still playing one, actually: https://www.mousehuntgame.com https://www.mousehuntgame.com. They transitioned to just being a web game that runs in a FB frame for users that still wanted to play it there, but I haven't had an FB account for years now, and I can still play right at the URL. "Interesting but kind of tedious" is absolutely a great descriptor, though. It's basically an incremental game that grows at the slowest possible rate you can imagine.