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Being able to connect with people from around the world and share content is not a big waste to society.

samstave 14y ago
It is if that service is designed to A) Collect data about the society as a whole in order to B) sell them shit and C) spy on them.
dvdhsu 14y ago
> Being able to connect with people from around the world and share content is not a big waste to society. That's correct. However, the ability to "connect with people from around the world and share content" is, as your parent post notes, is Facebook's "core" functionality. What does Facebook have to show for the engineers they've hired this year, engineers they've hired last year? Are read receipts on Facebook chat more beneficial to "society" than other endeavors the engineers could be working on instead?
- nkwiatek 14y ago
  Do you really think it's appropriate to compare a 2-days-to-make chat feature with self-driving vehicles and clothes with computers in them?
- taligent 14y ago
  When Google changes its icons for special occasions is that more beneficial to "society" than other things they could be working. Is ANYTHING people do really the best they could do for society. I just don't understand why you are holding Facebook to some arbitrary standard.
  - JAlexoid 14y ago
    Actually, Google Doodles educate the society at large about people that made a difference in this world. So yes, work on Google Doodles is beneficial to society.
ajross 14y ago
But they were connecting people years ago. Facebook, from the perspective of their core features, has gotten only incrementally better over the last 5-6 years. And in doing so they've sucked up a huge chunk of talent. Google over the same period has produced a huge amount of stuff, some of it (gmail, android) wildly successful. Hell, Google has even cloned facebook itself (and from a technical perspective, arguably, done it better) in that time period. And they've done it with what seems to be a very comparable talent pool. So from that perspective, yes, Facebook's engineering employees are wasted.
- qq66 14y ago
  The biggest technical achievement of Facebook has been scaling Facebook. They've solved a lot of difficult technical problems to do so. And News Feed, Connect, and Open Graph are all huge steps forward in Facebook's ambition, although the third-party ecosystem still leaves something to be desired. Thank god that Facebook killed Evite, but now I'm hoping for someone/something to kill Washington Post Social Reader.
  - ajross 14y ago
    But again, Google did all that stuff too (almost 1:1, even -- remember that G+ is a facebook clone). And somehow they also found time to make self driving cars, a first tier mobile operating system, ChromsOS, a Dropbox clone, these ridiculous glasses, etc... Facebook just looks pretty lame in comparison, sorry.
    - llimllib 14y ago
      > Google did all that stuff too (almost 1:1, even -- remember that G+ is a facebook clone That misses qq66's point; G+ isn't a 1:1 clone exactly because it doesn't do anything like a quarter billion photos per day. I'm not doubting G's potential to handle Facebook scale, but they're very far away from it right now.
      - gvb 14y ago
        What about Youtube? Picassa? Indexing the whole internet? That is some amazing scale.
uptown 14y ago
What I find interesting about Facebook is that it allowed people from the current (and previous) generations to re-connect with people they'd lost touch with since previously there had been no tool designed to easily facilitate reconnecting. Future generations may find they they won't lose those connections since the tools will be in place allowing them to remain in touch as much or as little as they choose. Will they still have the same motivation to re-connect at some point in their lives if that opportunity has always been available to them? There's a very large percentage of Facebook users whose "friends" are really just people they knew back in high school that they connected with on Facebook out of curiosity. It'll be interesting to see if that dynamic continues for future generations.

It is if that service is designed to A) Collect data about the society as a whole in order to B) sell them shit and C) spy on them.

dvdhsu 14y ago

> Being able to connect with people from around the world and share content is not a big waste to society. That's correct. However, the ability to "connect with people from around the world and share content" is, as your parent post notes, is Facebook's "core" functionality. What does Facebook have to show for the engineers they've hired this year, engineers they've hired last year? Are read receipts on Facebook chat more beneficial to "society" than other endeavors the engineers could be working on instead?

nkwiatek 14y ago
Do you really think it's appropriate to compare a 2-days-to-make chat feature with self-driving vehicles and clothes with computers in them?
taligent 14y ago
When Google changes its icons for special occasions is that more beneficial to "society" than other things they could be working. Is ANYTHING people do really the best they could do for society. I just don't understand why you are holding Facebook to some arbitrary standard.
- JAlexoid 14y ago
  Actually, Google Doodles educate the society at large about people that made a difference in this world. So yes, work on Google Doodles is beneficial to society.

ajross 14y ago

But they were connecting people years ago. Facebook, from the perspective of their core features, has gotten only incrementally better over the last 5-6 years. And in doing so they've sucked up a huge chunk of talent. Google over the same period has produced a huge amount of stuff, some of it (gmail, android) wildly successful. Hell, Google has even cloned facebook itself (and from a technical perspective, arguably, done it better) in that time period. And they've done it with what seems to be a very comparable talent pool. So from that perspective, yes, Facebook's engineering employees are wasted.

qq66 14y ago
The biggest technical achievement of Facebook has been scaling Facebook. They've solved a lot of difficult technical problems to do so. And News Feed, Connect, and Open Graph are all huge steps forward in Facebook's ambition, although the third-party ecosystem still leaves something to be desired. Thank god that Facebook killed Evite, but now I'm hoping for someone/something to kill Washington Post Social Reader.
- ajross 14y ago
  But again, Google did all that stuff too (almost 1:1, even -- remember that G+ is a facebook clone). And somehow they also found time to make self driving cars, a first tier mobile operating system, ChromsOS, a Dropbox clone, these ridiculous glasses, etc... Facebook just looks pretty lame in comparison, sorry.
  - llimllib 14y ago
    > Google did all that stuff too (almost 1:1, even -- remember that G+ is a facebook clone That misses qq66's point; G+ isn't a 1:1 clone exactly because it doesn't do anything like a quarter billion photos per day. I'm not doubting G's potential to handle Facebook scale, but they're very far away from it right now.
    - gvb 14y ago
      What about Youtube? Picassa? Indexing the whole internet? That is some amazing scale.

uptown 14y ago

What I find interesting about Facebook is that it allowed people from the current (and previous) generations to re-connect with people they'd lost touch with since previously there had been no tool designed to easily facilitate reconnecting. Future generations may find they they won't lose those connections since the tools will be in place allowing them to remain in touch as much or as little as they choose. Will they still have the same motivation to re-connect at some point in their lives if that opportunity has always been available to them? There's a very large percentage of Facebook users whose "friends" are really just people they knew back in high school that they connected with on Facebook out of curiosity. It'll be interesting to see if that dynamic continues for future generations.