
Is Poke Proof That The Facebook API Is A Trojan Horse? - leemhoffman
It seems to be common belief in startup land, that if you're smart and lucky enough to build a wildly successful consumer product, by the time competitors (particularly the 800lb gorillas) copy you, your network effects, market ownership, and brand will help insulate you.<p>It's why, I imagine, Foursquare still exists after Facebook places, why Facebook bought Instagram, and honestly why Facebook even exists in a world of Google's and Microsofts.<p>But what if at the genesis of every single new product, startups began feeding real time access to their most important stats to those 800lb gorillas? What would happen? Well for a while the big guys might ignore the data and scoff at caring about some insignificant startup numbers.<p>But then one day one of those startups would probably become really successful. Billion dollar acquisition successful. And all of a sudden the minds that be at the 800lb gorilla would say to themselves - "Wait! Why are we waiting for companies to be big enough that we need to pay $1B dollars! Why don't we just start buying or copying products as soon as they have really high engagement and growth rates before they come close to owning the market?"<p>And this seems to be exactly what happened with Facebook and Poke. Facebook has acknowledged [http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/21/mark-zuckerberg-voice-of-poke/] they tried to buy Poke a little while back, and when they were rejected decided to build it. And it seems to be working - as of right now Facebook Poke is now holding the #2 spot in the app store, while snap chat is #5.<p>This is in no way saying Poke has won, but if i were the SnapChat team I would be concerned. In fact, I think anyone that uses the Facebook API should be. I am. The Facebook API is an amazingly useful and powerful tool, but this is an issue that needs to be discussed, and the ramifications need to be understood. Because right now Facebook clearly seems to understand them, even if we don't.
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blhack
If you are as confused by OPs talking about 800lb gorillas and soforth as I
was:

Snapchat is a picture sharing application that uses facebook's API.

Poke is a competitor that facebook made.

OP is implying that facebook saw Snapchat's beginning success by seeing how
many API calls they were making and then copied snapchat, instead of buying
them.

Thus: OP is implying that Facebook uses its API to see up-and-comers in the
social space, and then copies them.

(Trojan Horse was very confusing here. Typcially "Trojan Horse", used in this
case, would mean that facebook was actually controlling snapchat interactions
beyond what snapchat intended.)

Personally I don't think that this is a very unique idea, and calling
facebook's API a "trojan horse" over it is absurd.

Buying out a company isn't done for honor, it's done for value. Facebook
doesn't buy you because it's the "right" thing to do because you "beat them to
it" with an idea. They do it because it's easier for them to do so than to
build a copy. Maybe this means they're buying some IP, or a community, or some
talent or something, but it has nothing to do with "because it's the right
thing to do".

\---

Snapchat: <http://www.snapchat.com/#>

Poke: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook-
poke/id588594730?mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook-
poke/id588594730?mt=8)

~~~
dcope
Where do you get the idea that Snapchat uses the Facebook API? I have the app
and I see no signs of it and I can't find any mention of it on their website.

------
diego
If I were to start a company today, I wouldn't touch the space of "social"
with a linked list of ten-foot poles.

~~~
TillE
Honestly, I think the current incarnation of social crap is going to be pretty
short-lived. If you really look at it, very little is actually any good at
what it does. It's just barely good enough. Google Hangouts is probably the
only significant innovation in the past few years.

I'd be very interested in a startup promising genuine innovation, connecting
people in new ways and changing the way we can socialize, something that
everyone of a certain demographic would want to use. That's basically what
Facebook was early on.

But building in line with the current "social" paradigm? Not very interesting.

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biznickman
1\. We don't yet know whether or not Facebook's Poke app will be successful.

2\. Snapchat has been popular for a while ... why did they just start copying
now?

3\. Facebook has repeatedly demonstrated a desire to build in what they
perceive to be as replaceable features since day 1 of the platform. SuperWall,
SuperPoke, Free Gifts, and many more were eventually integrated or blocked.
They've tried to replicate Quora (the questions failed), FriendFeed (they
copied the "like" and the real-time feed before acquiring them), Instagram
(their separate photos app), and more.

\--

I think the key risk here is operating in a space that can be easily
replicated by the 800lb gorilla. The API is not a trojan horse. It's the
platform that enables many of the viral apps to grow. Yes, there's no doubt
they get intelligence from their data, but that's not the sole purpose of the
API and suggesting so is ludicrous (there are plenty of other sources for
data, including the Apple app store).

There are also are plenty of examples where Facebook simply could not
replicate some of the other companies' success despite a similar feature set.
Blake Ross claims they made the new Poke app in "12 days". (He also was
responsible for the failed Questions app).

It's a statement that they believe SnapChat is a feature. That's not yet
proven and we'll have to see how this plays out. This is step 1 (test whether
or not SnapChat is simply a feature). Step 2 is to become more aggressive with
acquisition offers should the Poke app fail AND should SnapChat continue to
experience massive growth.

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kanamekun
The Apple app store rankings are public though... so couldn't anyone have seen
that the app was doing well, and cloned it?

Beyond raw resources, Facebook's big advantages seem to be its well-known
brand and its ability to incubate new properties. That brand won't always help
though - in some cases, a focused brand will have an advantage. And a viral
property could negate Facebook's distribution advantages - although perhaps
that's less likely given how they've cut back on news feed distribution.

~~~
leemhoffman
My suspicion is that App Store rank doesn't necessarily translate into highly
used app. Many of the highly ranked apps get there by buying downloads. There
definitely is a ton of open data on app success out there, though spotting an
app with an organically fast growth rate and high DAU is probably much harder
without access to quality data.

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k-mcgrady
The problem isn't that Facebook can just copy your company. Snap Chat built a
feature, not a product. It seems to me turning down any offer from Facebook to
purchase it was stupid. Facebook would obviously build their own version of
the app in a few weeks and it seems likely Poke will win.

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jinushaun
This is true of any API from a for-profit company, just look at the problems
with Google Maps and Twitter. If I were making a startup today, I would not
piggy back off any of these social APIs for this reason.

~~~
contingencies
Just letting you know in case it's not something you're aware of: your name
reads like "Prostitute Shaun" in Mandarin.

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octopi
To those confused about how Snapchat uses the Facebook API:

At least for iOS, Snapchat (used to?) have a feature where you can "find
friends via Facebook." Taking a closer look at the latest version now though,
it appears this feature has gone away and the only way to add friends on
Snapchat is through your contacts list or directly by username.

I believe the OP is implying that calls to the Facebook API (even those as
trivial as fetching friends) gives Facebook valuable data that it can analyze
and exploit for their own gain.

~~~
spullara
That feature wasn't present when I started using it a month or so ago. It made
it impossible to find friends on it.

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Hawkee
This reminds me of the dispute between Microsoft and Netscape when Microsoft
released IE. There is always the chance that the 800lb gorilla will copy you,
API or not. I find it hard to believe that Facebook copied SnapChat because of
the API. They were probably most influenced by the press and acclaim the app
was generating. Add in the fact that SnapChat only took 12 days to replicate
and you've got a very real target.

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spullara
As far as I can tell, SnapChat didn't use the Facebook API. I guess that kind
of shoots a big hole in the argument?

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chews
Sir, you're mistaken. At best facebook could've seen the calls Snapchat was
using for friend matching but they weren't dependent as a company on
facebook's infrastructure which is what your post is implying.

Snapchat should be concerned, but not because by use of facebook's apis gave
facebook the valuable insight into some interesting user behavior.

No, they saw it was a cool app that was doing well in the store. They have
distribution of over 800M people.... "hey, remember poking?... yeah that old
feature we used to have... yeah... lets just make a snapchat clone and call it
poke." That conversation could've happened over lunch or at a hackathon and it
goes straight to production.

Guy's there is very little honor in the realm of ideas rightnow. Facebook is
throwing punches just like everyone else.

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codexnight
Well judging by the budget companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft and so
on have, they could theoretically copy almost anything and render startups
and/or existing companies useless.Should we all give up on creating
startups?No, definitely not.

Snapchat made a crucial error when they decided to refuse acquisition by
facebook.I don't know what they were thinking.They should've analyzed the
situation beforehand.They had no real leverage to refuse it.

On a side note, Facebook is powerful because we empower it.We could say it is
an identity database and it is used by 800 mil people if not more.Also it is
addictive to most of them.So in conclusion it's easier for users to just add
something related to their already well established page.

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gregcohn
Snapchat was a clever take but not particularly defensible.

The real test is whether FB will allow a strong competitor to survive and
continue to consume its api.

Basically Twitter did the same thing to many of the basic tweet consumption &
production apps -- the killer move Twitter made, though, was cutting off api
access to those competitors, which FB have not AFAIK done. (Though another
comment mentions that the find friends via FB feature is gone from snapchat, I
haven't seen anyone commenting that they were cut off by FB and will assume it
was snapchat's decision to remove it.)

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KaoruAoiShiho
Can you tell us how much of the FB API SnapChat was using and if there's a
"safe" way to take advantage of FB Graph and other features without leaking
too much detail to FB?

~~~
mschaecher
I've never used SnapChat, but hypothetically if you wanted to limit data going
back to facebook here's one potential approach.

For this example, let's say you have an app that you want to use facebook for
account creation and friend finding, but not necessarily distribution inside
of Facebook.

\- force facebook login for account creation \- upon auth redirect back to
your app, force signup completion with password and other credentials you
might need. \- next step is invite/follow people from your facebook friends
list. \- When users come back to your account from now on, only allow login
via the credentials you had them create (password) and the email address you
pulled from facebook. No facebook logging in after the first time.

They'd still be able to see how many people used facebook to signup. But if
you don't let people continuously login with FB, or interact with their API
outside of one time or explicit actions, they won't be able to get a good
picture of your retention and engagement.

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Aardwolf
I (as a not really into the whole "Social" web thing person) am a bit
confused:

Facebook itself already has photo uploading, sharing and commenting. Instagram
is also something with photo uploading (but with applying effects to them).
SnapChat is picture sharing. So if Facebook copied it I guess Poke is also
picture sharing.

So Facebook has 3 different photo related things: Facebook photos, Instagram
and Poke.

What is the difference between these 3, simply put?

Thanks!

~~~
aorshan
The big thing with poke/snapchat is that they send pictures that aren't stored
anywhere and can only be viewed for a few seconds, after which they are
inaccessible. This makes it easier and less worrisome for people to do things
like sext or send pictures of themselves making silly faces.

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dannyrosen
Before we adorn our tinfoil hats and assume that the first thing the Facebook
"Biz Dev" guys look at in the morning is their API stats, maybe this is an
exercise in "Empowering" internal employees to work on side projects not
directly associated with their core product. It also lends for a great
headline about their dev culture which in turn attracts more dev talent.

~~~
Fjslfj
The guy who led the development is Zuck's sidekick.

~~~
chimu999
Who exactly?

------
boi
They did not get 800lb by happenstance, so stop being silly with all these
trojan APIs and put-all-your-data-here-in-my-cloud trap, build your own stuff.

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ryanjones1
Has anyone tried PiccyBoo? does the same but Android only.

~~~
wantnotwant
Yeah love it. It does video and pics. Better than poke or Snapchat. And has
the FB integraton and filters too!

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scottmcleod
The solution is coming: http//beingcollective.org

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tkahn6
So here's something that just happened 5 minutes ago.

A girl I've been snapchatting with texted me and asked why the Poke app is
just like snapchat. I asked her if it was better, and she said 'I haven't used
it much, but it looks much better', and now we're using it instead of
snapchat.

Pretty fascinating. She downloaded the app because they're advertising it on
their mobile app.

~~~
dcope
That doesn't surprise me too much. Visually, the Poke app does look much more
appealing however the big win is obviously the Facebook integration. Snapchat
requires you to find friends by their phone number or by manually entering
their username. The Poke application on the other hand allows you instant
access to your entire friends list. In my opinion, the Poke app will
obliterate Snapchat because of this.

~~~
capsule_toy
I have a phone number for everyone I want to snapchat with, but a couple of
those people are not on Facebook. I can't imagine someone not having a
smartphone in my demographic but not having FB, while rare, does happen.

~~~
dcope
Sure, but that requires users typing in their phone number and having Snapchat
send a text to verify. I don't know about your friends, but I know for sure
mine would not do that. In my opinion, Facebook is much more reputable than
Snapchat.

