

2014: Facebook makes Credits mandatory for all FB Connected sites - immad
http://www.immadsnewworld.com/2010/11/2014-facebook-makes-credits-mandatory.html

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zaphar

        "In the case of Windows the solution turned out to be 
        government intervention."
    

I think that's debatable. The solution was innovation. People realized that
they couldn't beat MS at their own game so they changed the rules. Open
Source, Apple, Mozilla, They all changed the rules of the game and now MS is
finding it hard to compete in the space they created. I actually don't think
Government intervention had that much of an effect at all.

~~~
sudont
Well, except for the fact that government intervention forced Microsoft to
keep Office for Mac viable, along with providing operation funds that kept
Apple alive.

You're correct with OSS, that's succeeding despite how broken software patents
are.

~~~
randall
I don't remember the Government forcing Microsoft to keep Office for Mac
viable... I think that was Jobs' doing.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.#The_Micro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.#The_Microsoft_deal)

I read that Cult of the Mac book, and in it Leander seemed to indicate Jobs'
intention was to make sure people believed that Office would still work for
Mac, and that the cash investment was a way of doubling down on the notion
that Macs weren't going anywhere.

This is all based on my knowledge off hand / Wikipedia, so I definitely don't
consider it bullet proof. If the government intervened, I'd definitely want to
know.

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thenotself
This articles misses opportunities to dive deeply into every concept it
proposes. Even when discussing the use of Facebook credits, you really miss an
opportunity to discuss Facebook credits as a competitor to PayPal, and a
scenario where Facebook does for our online spending what they propose to do
for email with their Messaging system. It's a shame that you put this article
together so quickly without adding any depth.

For example, Facebook could use the same logic they used in their live
Messaging launch for our online spending - that by combining our social graph
with how we spend money online, we can better learn from, and organize our
spending. They could easily compete with services like Mint and Blippy by
providing interesting data about what we are purchasing, and what our friends
are purchasing. The opportunity to combine this with Facebook Places makes
this a likely scenario - a lot more likely than the childish idea of forcing
Credits for all FB connect sites simply to enforce a monopoly.

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terra_t
Heck, I'd like to see Facebook credits be more flexible than they are now. In
particular, I'd like to be able to use FB credits to pay people for work...
I've got a suspicion that this would undercut mechanical Turk.

I guess the main reason they won't let webmasters pay out FB credits is that
the first app people would build with it would be a gambling app... Too bad.

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aresant
"If Facebook Connect becomes prolific it would make Facebook a single point of
failure."

Funny thing there is that:

a) It is prolific.

b) It's gone down several times seriously damaging functionality across the
internet.

c) Any self-respecting webmaster learned from the outage, updated integration
to include failsafes.

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marcusbooster
Linkbait: This is a fictional scenario.

~~~
Semiapies
The 2014 dateline doesn't make it obvious that it's a fictional event?

I don't think it's a great article, but that's not much of a complaint.

~~~
ryan-allen
It doesn't make it clear it's fictional event. If I said "In 2014 taxes to be
raised to 70%" most people I daresay would think "Who announced that?" and go
to read more. It's sounds exactly like a factual statement. The article title
is absolutely misleading and I agree that it's linkbait (furthermore I don't
think it has any useful content either).

EDIT: I clicked on the link because I hoped to see what Facebook had to say
about their rationale in making such a decision and to hopefully find peoples
reactions to it. Instead I find one persons useless pondering about where
Facebook may head in a few years. Linkbait!

~~~
Semiapies
It's a _present-tense_ announcement about 2014. Not, "In 2014, Facebook
will..." or "In 2014, Facebook plans to..."

For another, _four years_! What's the last time Facebook or anyone in that
space has made any kind of announcement that far in advance? How often does
anything that far out show up in HN except for hand-waved claims that some
experiment _could_ result in a product in 5 or 10 or however many years the
writer is pulling out of his ass? :)

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azoo32
<https://login.facebook.com/login.php?login_attempt=1>

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geuis
"Recently Facebook showed its power by killing Lamebook.com." Last time I
checked, i.e. 16 seconds ago, <http://lamebook.com> is still alive and well.

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azoo32
login.facebook.com/login.php?login_attempt=1

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azoo32
facebook.com

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azoo32
nimbuzz.com

