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It sounds like you're assuming that those 40 million users weren't already Facebook users which I highly doubt. I could be wrong though, but really, what are th

It sounds like you're assuming that those 40 million users weren't already Facebook users which I highly doubt. I could be wrong though, but really, what are the chances of that? It sounds more like they wanted to keep Google from getting Instagram which would have made sense for them to get those 40 million users on G+.

eli 15y ago
I really doubt they were users of Facebook's mobile photo sharing feature...
ChuckMcM 15y ago
I find the 'keep them off Google+' another credible line of reasoning on the valuation as well. If Google could monetize them at a $10 CPM and a 75% daily engagement (30M views a day) that is 100M/yr in revenue. So 1B is a 10x multiplier on revenue. One thing is clear, a year from now some will say 'see I told you' and some will say 'wow I didn't expect that' and a few will be able to decide if its a net positive or not on their resume :-)
bad_user 15y ago
In my experience as a user of Facebook on mobile phones, mobile Facebook sucks. From a technical perspective, the UI of their native app suffers from lag, making it unusable for me, which is why I prefer opening Facebook in my mobile browser. The web experience is much better and doesn't bother me much, except when I want to upload photos. Also, the whole Facebook experience sucks on mobiles phones because Facebook was designed for desktop browsers and there are no easy ways out. The difference on mobile phones is that because of the small screen size the consumption of content has to be linear and the Facebook stream is anything but (unline Twitter or your SMS Inbox). To add salt to the injury, a big part of what forms the Facebook experience is made of Flash-powered games and shitty apps that weren't designed for small touch-screens. Basically Facebook has gotten too big to turn around fast and redesign their experience around mobile phones. They may be able to pull it off, but I suspect that their strategy is to break Facebook on mobile phones in multiple apps. A really big and important part of Facebook is sharing and seeing photos of other people. Google saw that and one thing that Google+ does well is the sharing of photos. Google Picasa was integrated with G+, so this means cheap storage for full-resolution pictures and a kickass desktop tool for managing big photo collections. Android also comes with Google Picasa integration by default, so whatever you upload on Picassa it ends up synchronized to your mobile phone (or vice-versa). Then the G+ interface is really slick; the mobile app is not too shabby and the web browsing experience is good (or was, there's something off about their redesign). The bottom line is this ... those 40 million users may already be Facebook users, but I bet they aren't mobile Facebook users ;-)
- ajross 15y ago
  I'll corroborate the mobile facebook software problems. Even on a good wifi connection (i.e. I'm browsing happily on the very same device) it routinely takes 4-10 seconds for anything to show up. I'm not sure I buy the "Facebook experience is anything but [linear]" point though. Certainly the web UI is broadly linear, and presented in the same order as the mobile app. The ability to "drill down" into comments is poorly implemented in mobile (especially when compared with G+, which has a great mobile app). But really, I think Facebook could improve this greatly with just some tuning. I think the bigger problem, and one mentioned frequently elsewhere, is that the mobile app doesn't have the same ability to push revenue-producing content at the users. An ad or game or "suggestion" or whatnot in the sidebar is benign on the desktop. On mobile it's an annoyance.

eli 15y ago

I really doubt they were users of Facebook's mobile photo sharing feature...

ChuckMcM 15y ago

I find the 'keep them off Google+' another credible line of reasoning on the valuation as well. If Google could monetize them at a $10 CPM and a 75% daily engagement (30M views a day) that is 100M/yr in revenue. So 1B is a 10x multiplier on revenue. One thing is clear, a year from now some will say 'see I told you' and some will say 'wow I didn't expect that' and a few will be able to decide if its a net positive or not on their resume :-)

bad_user 15y ago

In my experience as a user of Facebook on mobile phones, mobile Facebook sucks. From a technical perspective, the UI of their native app suffers from lag, making it unusable for me, which is why I prefer opening Facebook in my mobile browser. The web experience is much better and doesn't bother me much, except when I want to upload photos. Also, the whole Facebook experience sucks on mobiles phones because Facebook was designed for desktop browsers and there are no easy ways out. The difference on mobile phones is that because of the small screen size the consumption of content has to be linear and the Facebook stream is anything but (unline Twitter or your SMS Inbox). To add salt to the injury, a big part of what forms the Facebook experience is made of Flash-powered games and shitty apps that weren't designed for small touch-screens. Basically Facebook has gotten too big to turn around fast and redesign their experience around mobile phones. They may be able to pull it off, but I suspect that their strategy is to break Facebook on mobile phones in multiple apps. A really big and important part of Facebook is sharing and seeing photos of other people. Google saw that and one thing that Google+ does well is the sharing of photos. Google Picasa was integrated with G+, so this means cheap storage for full-resolution pictures and a kickass desktop tool for managing big photo collections. Android also comes with Google Picasa integration by default, so whatever you upload on Picassa it ends up synchronized to your mobile phone (or vice-versa). Then the G+ interface is really slick; the mobile app is not too shabby and the web browsing experience is good (or was, there's something off about their redesign). The bottom line is this ... those 40 million users may already be Facebook users, but I bet they aren't mobile Facebook users ;-)

ajross 15y ago
I'll corroborate the mobile facebook software problems. Even on a good wifi connection (i.e. I'm browsing happily on the very same device) it routinely takes 4-10 seconds for anything to show up. I'm not sure I buy the "Facebook experience is anything but [linear]" point though. Certainly the web UI is broadly linear, and presented in the same order as the mobile app. The ability to "drill down" into comments is poorly implemented in mobile (especially when compared with G+, which has a great mobile app). But really, I think Facebook could improve this greatly with just some tuning. I think the bigger problem, and one mentioned frequently elsewhere, is that the mobile app doesn't have the same ability to push revenue-producing content at the users. An ad or game or "suggestion" or whatnot in the sidebar is benign on the desktop. On mobile it's an annoyance.