

Facebook Tries Again on a Smartphone - tayeed
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/facebook-tries-tries-again-on-a-smartphone/

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amartya916
" _It could easily scoop up an infirm company like Research in Motion, which
is valued at less than $6 billion, and drop a beautifully designed Facebook
operating system on top of RIM’s phones._ "

I find this to be an affront to engineers and designers. It trivializes the
amount of time and effort it takes to make a well engineered product.

Can someone elucidate why it might be important for Facebook to have it's own
hardware? Why wouldn't apps on an Android or iOS or Windows Phone be good
enough (of course with seamless integration like Twitter on iOS)?

P.S. With Facebook's current alliance with MS, doesn't Windows Phone make for
a good platform to build upon. Note, I believe that Windows Phone will
eventually take off.

~~~
notatoad
It's about control. On my smartphone, its easy to start using google plus
instead of Facebook. If I had bought a Facebook phone, they could lock it in
to Facebook services so that i use Facebook as my primary social network for
at least the life of my phone.

Also, it's a revenue stream. Facebook has a huge userbase but very few of
their users actually pay them money. If they started selling hardware they
could collect money from those users.

~~~
superuser2
Also it's about the control that Facebook, like Apple, might be able to
deliver better UX if they could design for and thoroughly test on very
specific combinations of hardware, instead of trying to function across so
many different chips and screen sizes.

~~~
fpgeek
But Facebook, unlike Apple, has no practical choice about operating across
those many different chips and screen sizes. Social networks are driven by
exceptionally strong network effects. If Facebook doesn't reasonably operate
across those chips and screen sizes, they run a serious risk of losing out to
a competitor that does, especially since there's a significant one waiting in
the wings.

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Tooluka
Soon Facebook will acquire enough mass to cross Chandrasekhar limit and
collapse into a black hole of the internet. No information will ever leave the
system, its existence will be observed only by interaction with advertisement
radiation in the internet. People will claim that they left FB space but that
is physically impossible. Over time interstellar drift may cause FB blackhole
to collide with Google or Apple galaxy. And then whole internet cluster will
collapse.

~~~
koglerjs
I prefer to think that it will just briefly cross the Chandrasekhar limit,
spew hordes of information out of the system in a supernova brighter than the
galaxy of the entire Internet, and then subside to a neutron core no one cares
about.

Like MySpace. Although MySpace never really had the mass, and is I suppose
currently a white dwarf.

~~~
kijin
> _spew hordes of information out of the system in a supernova_

A massive security breach that puts everyone's personal information in the
hands of lulzsec? That would be one hell of a scary spectacle...

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jiggy2011
I know a fair number of people who bought smartphones for the specific purpose
of using facebook on the move. Even for those who didn't it's often a big use
case.

I wonder if facebook could release it's own phone (linked to a FB account) and
then restrict access of other smartphones to it's platforms and APIs (so that
they become a crippled shell) while adding features that were exclusive to the
FB phone.

Could dominate the entire smartphone game in one move.

~~~
mayanksinghal
On the other hand, I think it would be suicidal. While I agree that the phones
of some (may be many) might be utilized solely for the purpose of checking
Facebook regularly and on the move; there are still other reasons why people
prefer one phone over other.

They have already opened up enough APIs to allow for decent third party
clients - if they make a policy to withdraw it, developers and users who have
already bought a smartphone will not only panic but probably revolt as well.

Alienating existing userbase, when alternative platforms like Quora are just
starting to get very popular would be suicidal. In fact my university is
already seeing a mass migration from Facebook to Quora and reddit (and HN).

~~~
jiggy2011
Things like Quora and reddit aren't really FB substitutes (at least for most
people) although I suppose they could be at risk from Google+.

They would have to stop this from becoming just another "me too" phone , the
only way I can think of doing that would be to somehow leverage their existing
userbase and make sure that using FB from their phone is a much better
experience. The only way I can think of them doing that is by restricted what
other phones can actually do.

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drcube
I was surprised to read that Facebook has its own operating system. Does
anybody know anything about this?

Count me in as someone who would never use a Facebook phone. Might as well use
a CIA phone. I'm all for watching the competition though.

~~~
maclaren
I doubt they will roll an entire mobile operating system in the time frame
mentioned. A kindle-esque customized Android phone seems more likely.

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mgkimsal
They could try to revive webOS - certainly a lot of work already gone in to
that.

~~~
conipto
FacePalm?

~~~
mgkimsal
Touché!

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lnanek2
Doesn't make much sense to us techies, but maybe they'll pull some sort of
business hack like amazon. Amazon ended up with the most popular Android-based
tablet since they subsidized the hardware cost with their media sales and did
things standard Android manufacturers wouldn't like left out cameras (which
raise the cost/size/weight/power use).

Reminds me of all the talk previously about Google making a free phone
service. Google and Facebook both make all their money from ads. So they might
be able to do something like that, which doesn't make sense to hardware
companies.

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zitterbewegung
It should be titled "Facebook tries to obtain a platform that it controls so
that it isn't reliant on others".

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sanj
_...take the same approach as Amazon, offering low-cost hardware, like the
Kindle, and subsidizing some of the costs through advertising._

Except that, by its own admission, Facebook hasn't figured out how to make
advertising money on mobile devices.

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pemulis
How do you become head tech news guy at the New York Times when you think
Facebook is an operating system and that the company could "easily scoop up"
RIM?

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VeejayRampay
Cause I'm sure the Apple engineers they snatched have no NDA whatsoever and
will be able to bring the tech to Facebook in no time.

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tomwaddington
I'm surprised the article doesn't mention INQ - there've been rumours around a
possible linkup there for a while.

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lucianm
If Facebook buys RIM, we're screwed.

~~~
objclxt
I think more aptly, if Facebook buys RIM _they're_ screwed.

It's just crazy talk. Facebook has a headcount of 3,500, and people seriously
think they can feasible buy out RIM, with 17,500 people, and then just
magically integrate them and _poof_ produce a great phone? It's madness.

If you take the article at face value, Facebook have already tried developing
their own hardware and had it implode due to a lack of experience. So for the
author to seriously suggest the solution should be to acquire HTC or RIM when
Facebook have _equally little_ experience doing large mergers and acquisitions
makes no sense to me.

~~~
HorizonXP
TBH, if Facebook was serious about producing their own phone, buying RIM and
letting it operate as a subsidiary would be a wise move.

RIM/QNX make great hardware and (now) software. No one would disagree that
they need help on the user experience side of things. They've made great
strides in this area too, but that's where Facebook can help. RIM can stick to
what it's good at.

That said, I really hope that doesn't happen.

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smokeyj
FB OS. AKA Root-kit.

