

Marc Benioff: Future Software Will Look Like Facebook - vanwilder77
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/09/20/163225/salesforce-ceo-benioff-future-software-will-look-like-facebook

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gaius
_If people can collaborate on tagging a photo, he added, they could easily do
the same with a product or business problem_

Is this not the Google Wave Fallacy?

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Floopsy
If that is what the future is going to look like, I am getting rid of my
computers now and taking up gardening and bird watching.

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DeepDuh
I like your plan. Let's join forces and disrupt the gardening and bird
watching space using cutting edge crowdsourced location aware mobile
technology.

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ktizo
_cutting edge crowdsourced location aware mobile technology._

Is that like one of those Swiss army knives with a built-in compass?

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DeepDuh
Yes, like that. Oh did I mention that it uses GPGPU accelerated cloud
computing?

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edtechdev
This has already been happening for quite a while now. Not exactly a radical
prediction.

Learning management systems like Blackboard and Instructure Canvas are
basically imitating facebook now. Edmodo goes the other way and basically
starts from facebook and then adds in some learning/teaching features like
quizzes and assignments.

Of course github has taken off the past few years, and it has feeds and likes
(starring projects) and follows.

As someone commented on slashdot, even AutoCAD added a 'design feed' feature
<http://www.autocadws.com/blog/introducing-the-design-feed/>

For things that aren't enough to warrant social attention to 'like' (like
posting 100 times), there seems to be more use of badges like on forums and
stack exchange.

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simon
Whenever I see statements of this form, I find myself adding "except when it
doesn't" to the end and then finding it much more acceptable.

Future software will look like Facebook except when it doesn't.

Much better.

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jkaljundi
Feed-based enterprise products can be a nightmare for users to follow. There
must be structured filtering, categorizing, subsets etc to make sure you can
find needed information quickly, not miss important stuff and not having to
read through absolutely everything in the newsfeed. For many types of
information, using the newsfeed paradigm would be absolutely incorrect.

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Zenst
Agreed any feed based system, even with filters adhears to one fixed albeit
customised set of filters. When you can have a different filter set that takes
into account what is important to you right there and now, which changes. Then
it will be more managable, but that is still away of as predicting the weather
100% right all the time. Compters are good after all at learning from there
mistakes once said mistakes have been highlighted to them, it is when they
learn human mistakes which the human is unaware of that starts to become an
area of conflict.

But if feed based products were the way to go then USENET would of been
growing in popularity above and beyond the binary feeds.

We after all as humans are still pefecting ourselfs and with that we are shy
of any software that dictates direction for us. For most a forum were the
input feeds are moderated and sanatised by others prior to you getting it is
the common form, be it via crowd sourced forums like this or teirs of
managment filtering what is interesting. Though the ability to overide those
filters is just as important than having them and any other way is dictating
and controlling the information in a way that makes most uncomfortable in the
expectation that they are missing something which to them is important. Just
as if this forum had no search option and the ability to view only the deemed
top news items, well you know how that would work out badly, even if most
don't use search or the new options much.

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ArekDymalski
It's not futuristic anymore. It's today's software. Future is still being
cooked in someone's bedroom. Right now.

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Cherian_Abraham
Over a year ago, I wrote up an early product requirements doc for how law
enforcement investigations will function if investigators could follow cases,
evidence, firearms, events, suspects, persons of interest, locations similar
to how we follow people on Twitter or Facebook. It would make it incredibly
easier for them to be notified when something changes, instead of having to
manually be alerted about something of relevance.

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gojomo
My hunch is _yes_ , there are successful patterns in Facebook that will
propagate to many other software categories, both because they are beneficial
and users have een trained to expect them... but then _no_ , those patterns
won't dominate completely, because certain countervailing needs will
change/moderate/negate them.

For example, the 'news feed' is super compelling and attention-grabbing, but
at least partially in attention-abusive ways. By intermixing updates of wildly
different importance, provenance, and topic, a heightened sense of novelty is
created. By the use of reverse-chronological order, a false urgency is created
-- "I must read/reply before it scrolls out of view!" -- even when the topics
aren't really urgent. So this pattern is a sugar/steroid/stimulant for
engagements... against which the mentally-healthy will eventually have to
_disengage_ and replace with something more respectful of their attention,
with truer cues about novelty and importance.

So I expect the 'feed' pattern to be copied everywhere it might offer a quick
bit of 'sizzle' to interactions... but also for new ameliorative antipatterns
to be developed, and modify or displace the 'feed', as well. Especially in
productive contexts where entertainment/diversion/distraction is _not_ the
highest value, it will be tried but then modified or discarded.

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eyevariety
It is ADD for sure, but there is a measured dopamine response to this type of
interaction. The easiest way to understand the history of any object is
through a timeline, so when appropriate I do think you are going to see a lot
more of it.

From my vantage all of the modern social networks feel like the newest
incarnation of the blog model, which has always had that timeline model.

Nir Eyal has some nice thoughts on it: <http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/08/the-
webs-slot-machine.html>

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gojomo
If you want a summary history for a unified object, the revchron presentation
is natural and minimally abusive. (Though, we may yet find better standard
presentations for hiding info that is attention-grabbing but lower-value.)

Mixing _unrelated_ things, and making this mixed-history the default view, and
optimizing it relentlessly for impressions/engagement -- those are all thiings
that trend towards abusing people's attention. People will become more aware
and less tolerant of such 'false excitement' UX over time, presenting more
opportunities for designs and businesses that respect rather than squander our
mental cycles.

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eyevariety
Good perspective!

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antihero
Seriously what the fuck is with all these articles lately that are just links
to Slashdot?

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ktizo
Facebook looks like tv listings and classifieds pages from old print magazines
to me. If the future of software looks like facebook, there will be a hell of
a lot of disappointed people.

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harryf
Salesforce isn't exactly known for good taste in UI themselves. And feeds?
Seriously? More ADD isn't going to make anyone more profits

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taw9
Sussman must get so pissed after reading stuff like this (after he wgets the
page and opens it up in his email client, that is).

