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Facebook’s insane mobile takeover

38 points by chkuendig 12y ago

briandear 12y ago
Facebook owning mobile? Not hardly. They have users not because of the quality of their mobile experience. Their main app is still a POS. And, they still seem to have an aversion to native development -- their React "native" play is just a rehash of their earlier HTML 5 experiment. The purchased expertise from Instagram, etc is helping, but they are buying users, not necessarily earning them by creating a superior mobile product. The messenger spin off had minimal purpose except to annoy me. I get message notification on the main app, yet I have to open another app to read them? Who thought that was a good idea? It is almost at the same level of annoyance as the Foursquare spinoff of Swarm. Yes, FB kills it when it comes to users, however the cable companies have a lot of users too; that doesn't mean they're awesome. Financially Facebook might be doing really well, but that doesn't necessarily make them some kind of guru when it comes to mobile. When I think "awesome mobile experience," Facebook isn't what comes immediately to mind.
- cardiffspaceman 12y ago
  I recently deleted the app and the messaging appendage. When messaging was integrated, I actually had a situation where messages via Facebook were essential, and having the notifications set up to audibly alert me was enough to use up power faster than I could put it back in on a travel day. It seems like the problems of using Facebook are what you'd expect from a lack of engineering maturity.
- jasonmcalacanis 12y ago
  keep in mind WhatsApp and Instagram are not part of the disastrous lineage of FB html5 apps.
josephlord 12y ago
They seem to trying suck up a significant proportion of Android and iOS devs in the London area. They are producing lots of interesting libraries too, shame they are Facebook.
- dlu 12y ago
  They do this everywhere with a major office. Silicon Valley is this plus a handful of other equally huge companies
engendered 12y ago
Now, I would say Twitter’s users are worth 2-5x as much as the average FB users because the product is just much more “upscale.” What a strange claim. As an aside, recently the Facebook app (at least on Android) embedded its own web browser, so instead of going to Chrome when you followed a web link, it would open in the Facebook app. You can reconfigure it to use the external browser, but the power of defaults mean many won't. This seemingly small change has a big impact because if you open a link you want to share, the Facebook app restricts you to sharing it via your wall, versus the traditional Android app where you might share it over hangouts, Google+, email, etc.
- FlailFast 12y ago
  That small change was enough to get me to uninstall the Facebook app on my Nexus 5, and while I imagine there are others that felt that way, it certainly didn't manifest itself in their numbers, leading to some cognitive dissonance on my part. The incredible staying power of default behavior being what it is, I'm sure these continued attempts to grow FB's mobile control on Android will be ignored/accepted...but it makes me wonder at what point a normal user will say "enough is enough." What's the threshold for abusive default behavior in an app? Or a network/platform, for that matter?
  - mahyarm 12y ago
    When the annoyance outweighs the benefit.
- coralreef 12y ago
  Yeah that is a weird claim. Most twitter user's don't even tweet. Twitter has serious engagement issue with new users.
  - adventured 12y ago
    Even further, most of Twitters users don't have accounts, which is why they like to annoy people with the sign-up prompt ("Not on Twitter?") just to view a user's page.
graeme 12y ago
I've noticed a lot of friends are starting to Facebook message rather than text. You get read receipts, and replies are faster. (I'm in Canada)
- walterbell 12y ago
  BBM (which went cross-platform very late) does read receipts for msgs read in the app, but not for msgs read via notifications.
- TheAceOfHearts 12y ago
  I don't consider my Facebook application (i.e. wall, timeline, groups, etc.) usage very high, but my Facebook messenger usage is through the roof. I don't even have any other way to reach most of my friends or contacts. I get the impression this is very common among people in their twenties. Alternatives like Google Hangouts, Snapchat, Line, WeChat, etc. don't have nearly as many users, at least among my social groups.
walterbell 12y ago
How much of App Install revenue comes from F2P games?
- x0x0 12y ago
  and also, what fraction of mobile is cpi, and of that, what percentage is just recycled vc money? Because we all know what happened to yahoo during the first crash. Facebook not breaking those numbers out makes me strongly suspicious that the number is pretty damn high, and fb mobile revenue -- $2.5B in 4q14, almost 2/3 of ad revenue -- is very dependent on the, at minimum, frothy funding market.
  - jasonmcalacanis 12y ago
    It's a good observation. I discussed it with some folks who are... well..... anyway, I discussed it with folks and the "forthy" portion of the install revenue is very low (overall) to FB revenue. If it all went away it would not rock the company... low single digit %.
ecspike 12y ago
He lost me when he said "They will add Apps to directly compete with Google, like maps, email, and productivity (think: Evernote). As well as cloud storage." Did we already forget the fail that was FB email?
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  FB Mail wasn't as much email as it was email redirect. I could easily see them offering corporate email as part of the facebook@yourcompany, or whatever the corporate FB edition is called. Maps, storage and productivity are great ideas for FB to expand into. They have the users, and the infrastructure to handle massive amounts of data.
- dlu 12y ago
  I'm not even sure why he thinks they're heading in that direction. Until they do something like make a big productivity acquisition, I can't see them shifting over over from social
  - jasonmcalacanis 12y ago
    1. That's exactly what people said about Google before they launched Google Apps, Docs, etc. "why would Google do this?" -- the answer was clear: user engagement and the blurring of personal and professional data/personas. 2. If you hit scale, the best practices is to try and build as full of a stack as possible. That's why Microsoft did a search engine, Google did an Office Suite and why Facebook will do both at some point.
    - dlu 12y ago
      1. I feel like social and productivity are at two ends of a spectrum. Searc, at least in my mind, is closer to productivity. Still seems unlikely to me that they'd build it from scratch rather than buy someone. 2. Interesting that you think of the stack that way. So you think Facebook will encroach onto Search at some point? What exactly is in the full stack? And an obligatory reference to Apple, is Apple a different full stack or are they a short stack without search? Now I want pancakes
misiti3780 12y ago
"FB will give Snapchat $20b, 30b, and 40b offers over the next two years. 50-50 they get Evan to sell. " Does anyone else here think a 40B dollar offer for snapchat is kinda, lets say, out of the realm of possibilities?
- coralreef 12y ago
  Probably, but who could have predicted WhatsApp getting $19b?
- jasonmcalacanis 12y ago
  folks have offered $10b, so 40b is 4x that. If snapchat grows revenue by 4x they will get that number. case closed.
  - misiti3780 12y ago
    who has offered 10B for snapchat - i thought the highest number was 3B by facebook
eridius 12y ago
FB Messenger used to be a part of Facebook. They broke it out into a separate app. According to the author, the mere act of breaking it out suddenly gains Facebook an extra 500 million active monthly users. How does that make any sense? Splitting one app into two doesn't make it worth any more, and double-counting the users seems completely pointless.
- graeme 12y ago
  This doesn't address the statistics directly, but I send a lot more facebook messages now that messenger is separate. Means I can send a message without entering the timesink of the newsfeed. So the split may have produced new use.
- jasonmcalacanis 12y ago
  I make it clear a couple of times that there are duplicate users in those numbers. Additionally, I divide the total user count into FB's unique count, which gives you the number two. So, of the four Apps Facebook is giving numbers for... users on average are using two. Google has a dozen Apps in the store, and there is some overlap as well. This is the state of the art: one function per App. We'll see a LOT more of this over time. In fact, Google just made Docs into a couple of different Apps -- instead of just one with sheets, docs, presentations, etc.

38 points by chkuendig 12y ago

Facebook owning mobile? Not hardly. They have users not because of the quality of their mobile experience. Their main app is still a POS. And, they still seem to have an aversion to native development -- their React "native" play is just a rehash of their earlier HTML 5 experiment. The purchased expertise from Instagram, etc is helping, but they are buying users, not necessarily earning them by creating a superior mobile product. The messenger spin off had minimal purpose except to annoy me. I get message notification on the main app, yet I have to open another app to read them? Who thought that was a good idea? It is almost at the same level of annoyance as the Foursquare spinoff of Swarm. Yes, FB kills it when it comes to users, however the cable companies have a lot of users too; that doesn't mean they're awesome. Financially Facebook might be doing really well, but that doesn't necessarily make them some kind of guru when it comes to mobile. When I think "awesome mobile experience," Facebook isn't what comes immediately to mind.

cardiffspaceman 12y ago
I recently deleted the app and the messaging appendage. When messaging was integrated, I actually had a situation where messages via Facebook were essential, and having the notifications set up to audibly alert me was enough to use up power faster than I could put it back in on a travel day. It seems like the problems of using Facebook are what you'd expect from a lack of engineering maturity.
jasonmcalacanis 12y ago
keep in mind WhatsApp and Instagram are not part of the disastrous lineage of FB html5 apps.

josephlord 12y ago

They seem to trying suck up a significant proportion of Android and iOS devs in the London area. They are producing lots of interesting libraries too, shame they are Facebook.

dlu 12y ago
They do this everywhere with a major office. Silicon Valley is this plus a handful of other equally huge companies

engendered 12y ago

Now, I would say Twitter’s users are worth 2-5x as much as the average FB users because the product is just much more “upscale.” What a strange claim. As an aside, recently the Facebook app (at least on Android) embedded its own web browser, so instead of going to Chrome when you followed a web link, it would open in the Facebook app. You can reconfigure it to use the external browser, but the power of defaults mean many won't. This seemingly small change has a big impact because if you open a link you want to share, the Facebook app restricts you to sharing it via your wall, versus the traditional Android app where you might share it over hangouts, Google+, email, etc.

FlailFast 12y ago
That small change was enough to get me to uninstall the Facebook app on my Nexus 5, and while I imagine there are others that felt that way, it certainly didn't manifest itself in their numbers, leading to some cognitive dissonance on my part. The incredible staying power of default behavior being what it is, I'm sure these continued attempts to grow FB's mobile control on Android will be ignored/accepted...but it makes me wonder at what point a normal user will say "enough is enough." What's the threshold for abusive default behavior in an app? Or a network/platform, for that matter?
- mahyarm 12y ago
  When the annoyance outweighs the benefit.
coralreef 12y ago
Yeah that is a weird claim. Most twitter user's don't even tweet. Twitter has serious engagement issue with new users.
- adventured 12y ago
  Even further, most of Twitters users don't have accounts, which is why they like to annoy people with the sign-up prompt ("Not on Twitter?") just to view a user's page.

graeme 12y ago

I've noticed a lot of friends are starting to Facebook message rather than text. You get read receipts, and replies are faster. (I'm in Canada)

walterbell 12y ago
BBM (which went cross-platform very late) does read receipts for msgs read in the app, but not for msgs read via notifications.
TheAceOfHearts 12y ago
I don't consider my Facebook application (i.e. wall, timeline, groups, etc.) usage very high, but my Facebook messenger usage is through the roof. I don't even have any other way to reach most of my friends or contacts. I get the impression this is very common among people in their twenties. Alternatives like Google Hangouts, Snapchat, Line, WeChat, etc. don't have nearly as many users, at least among my social groups.

walterbell 12y ago

How much of App Install revenue comes from F2P games?

x0x0 12y ago
and also, what fraction of mobile is cpi, and of that, what percentage is just recycled vc money? Because we all know what happened to yahoo during the first crash. Facebook not breaking those numbers out makes me strongly suspicious that the number is pretty damn high, and fb mobile revenue -- $2.5B in 4q14, almost 2/3 of ad revenue -- is very dependent on the, at minimum, frothy funding market.
- jasonmcalacanis 12y ago
  It's a good observation. I discussed it with some folks who are... well..... anyway, I discussed it with folks and the "forthy" portion of the install revenue is very low (overall) to FB revenue. If it all went away it would not rock the company... low single digit %.

ecspike 12y ago

He lost me when he said "They will add Apps to directly compete with Google, like maps, email, and productivity (think: Evernote). As well as cloud storage." Did we already forget the fail that was FB email?

wodenokoto 12y ago
FB Mail wasn't as much email as it was email redirect. I could easily see them offering corporate email as part of the facebook@yourcompany, or whatever the corporate FB edition is called. Maps, storage and productivity are great ideas for FB to expand into. They have the users, and the infrastructure to handle massive amounts of data.
dlu 12y ago
I'm not even sure why he thinks they're heading in that direction. Until they do something like make a big productivity acquisition, I can't see them shifting over over from social
- jasonmcalacanis 12y ago
  1. That's exactly what people said about Google before they launched Google Apps, Docs, etc. "why would Google do this?" -- the answer was clear: user engagement and the blurring of personal and professional data/personas. 2. If you hit scale, the best practices is to try and build as full of a stack as possible. That's why Microsoft did a search engine, Google did an Office Suite and why Facebook will do both at some point.
  - dlu 12y ago
    1. I feel like social and productivity are at two ends of a spectrum. Searc, at least in my mind, is closer to productivity. Still seems unlikely to me that they'd build it from scratch rather than buy someone. 2. Interesting that you think of the stack that way. So you think Facebook will encroach onto Search at some point? What exactly is in the full stack? And an obligatory reference to Apple, is Apple a different full stack or are they a short stack without search? Now I want pancakes

misiti3780 12y ago

"FB will give Snapchat $20b, 30b, and 40b offers over the next two years. 50-50 they get Evan to sell. " Does anyone else here think a 40B dollar offer for snapchat is kinda, lets say, out of the realm of possibilities?

coralreef 12y ago
Probably, but who could have predicted WhatsApp getting $19b?
jasonmcalacanis 12y ago
folks have offered $10b, so 40b is 4x that. If snapchat grows revenue by 4x they will get that number. case closed.
- misiti3780 12y ago
  who has offered 10B for snapchat - i thought the highest number was 3B by facebook

eridius 12y ago

FB Messenger used to be a part of Facebook. They broke it out into a separate app. According to the author, the mere act of breaking it out suddenly gains Facebook an extra 500 million active monthly users. How does that make any sense? Splitting one app into two doesn't make it worth any more, and double-counting the users seems completely pointless.

graeme 12y ago
This doesn't address the statistics directly, but I send a lot more facebook messages now that messenger is separate. Means I can send a message without entering the timesink of the newsfeed. So the split may have produced new use.
jasonmcalacanis 12y ago
I make it clear a couple of times that there are duplicate users in those numbers. Additionally, I divide the total user count into FB's unique count, which gives you the number two. So, of the four Apps Facebook is giving numbers for... users on average are using two. Google has a dozen Apps in the store, and there is some overlap as well. This is the state of the art: one function per App. We'll see a LOT more of this over time. In fact, Google just made Docs into a couple of different Apps -- instead of just one with sheets, docs, presentations, etc.