
Mark Zuckerberg: Our Biggest Mistake Was Was Betting Too Much On HTML5 - twapi
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/11/mark-zuckerberg-our-biggest-mistake-with-mobile-was-betting-too-much-on-html5/
======
Pewpewarrows
As others have been pointing out feverishly on Twitter: the problem wasn't
them betting too much on HTML5. Their problem was developing piece of shit
apps that happened to use HTML5. They tasked amateurs who didn't know what
they were doing into building a hybrid native app container which in turn
embedded HTML5 content. Plenty of other developers (Instagram and LinkedIn
come to mind) have figured out how to do that right, and in a way where it is
seamless to the end user and for all intents and purposes feels exactly the
same as a native app.

I'm not saying that it's an easy problem. You have to find the right balance
between which components should be native or not. It's clear from the other
problems that Facebook's been able to solve that they know how to hire top-
notch developers. They just failed to do so for their mobile efforts, which
just reinforces the stereotype that they don't "get" mobile.

~~~
sil3ntmac
Yes, yes, a million times yes. Facebook is very resource intensive (in terms
of data+media loading over the wire) but there are certainly ways to work
around this. Yahoo mail's mobile site (at least on my iPhone 4 with ios5) is a
good example of this. The main problem with HTML5 media apps today is that
they must be developed with a primary focus on optimization _from the start_.
This is unfortunate, and will hopefully change, but it _is_ possible. But
seriously, saying "HTML5 failed you" when you don't even compile your scripts
and initial resources to require a minimal amount of requests is just
ludicrous.

To clarify: I'm not saying that facebook's HTML5 developers can't hold their
own -- they produced a great looking mobile app with a truckload of
functionality (and believe me, I understand code bloat). Maybe someday it will
run flawlessly on mobile. But right now to produce a nice experience in HTML5
you must optimize from the start. Run your code on the device from day 1, not
in Chrome with the vertical web inspector! Host your scripts on dev servers
with artificial lag. Figure out what's slowing you down on day 1 and _work
around it!_ And one day you won't have to :)

~~~
batista
> _Yahoo mail's mobile site (at least on my iPhone 4 with ios5) is a good
> example of this._

An app which all of 50 people use --and many of them curse while doing it.

~~~
rodion_89
According to comScore, Yahoo Mail is the third largest mail provider with over
300 million users.

Kicker:

> in the U.S., Yahoo is No. 1, with 96.6 million active users

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20114975-52/microsoft-
aimi...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20114975-52/microsoft-aiming-to-
clean-up-hotmail-users-inboxes/)

------
campnic
I don't work for Facebook. I work at a mobile company that does iOS and
Android development. I work daily on our Android apps. Here is my experience:

1\. The cost of maintaining iOS and Android is something like 1.5x the cost of
maintaining just one or the other. Most of the investment is architecture and
design. About 50% of the design is portable across iOS and Android.

2\. Developing reliable HTML5 that behaves predictably is as expensive as
developing for a native platform. You may already have the skills, but that
doesn't make it less expensive.

3\. Most touch frameworks (jQuery mobile, etc.) get you 85% of the way there
and then you're stuck. To get an app that can compete with native in terms of
realization of design, you end up with lots of non-framework code.

4\. (Android specific) The same fragmentation that hurts native development
hurts support for HTML5. The test matrix for HTML5/browser compatibility on
Android is almost as daunting as the native support. Different device/os
versions have different web cores that have different foibles. Its just as big
a grab bag as ever.

5\. Multimedia support for these environments is just atrocious. Unless you
can proxy/convert all content, all but the most trivial content is
inaccessible. You end up calling into other applications on the platforms
which can present a much less compelling presentation to the user.

I'm not going to say its impossible. I'm leaving out all the arguments of
performance because it just gets to be to specific to the use case. I have not
seen a compelling example of a unified mobile & desktop browser code base that
would eliminate all mobile maintenance. Besides just having people rip up my
points, I'd be interested in hearing what HTML5 components people are finding
make these issues manageable.

In the long run, its not black or white. We use HTML5/css/js for some things
and native for most things. Its how we keep things moving but I'm sure we'll
revisit this over and over to make sure we keep investing in the right
platform.

~~~
goggles99
Thanks you... People think that HTML5 us the second coming. Thank you for
putting it in context. Use the best tool for the job. I am tired of so much
hype over HTML5 - like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

------
mmahemoff
Zuckerberg's harsh words are a mixed blessing for HTML5. Some people will get
the wrong message and just dismiss HTML5 altogether, which isn't what he said.
His main point is he regrets building native apps with HTML5, and with the
benefit of hindsight, he is right.

The good thing about this is the browsers and standards people need a wake-up
call. See the comments in Paul Irish's recent thread about this [1].

There are people who are content to plod along and debate the finer points of
one attribute or another, while native APIs are steaming ahead. Quotes like
"We burned two years" and "Betting completely on HTML5 was the biggest
strategic mistake Facebook made" from Facebook's CEO are the kind of evidence
that should get people to wake up and smell the coffee, if they still haven't
done so.

1\.
[https://plus.google.com/113127438179392830442/posts/fR3iiuN4...](https://plus.google.com/113127438179392830442/posts/fR3iiuN4kEF)

~~~
tbranyen
I agree, but feel that with Facebook's resources there was nothing stopping
them from building a native application and a counterpart web application much
like Twitter. Using a friend's device? Opt for the web interface. Using your
own device? Native install.

These things can live in harmony, not exclusivity.

~~~
realrocker
But, the Facebook philosophy has always been, of hacking together what works
today and think about other things later. HTML5 allows rapid fluid UI(as in
feed based UI) development. The native app would have taken atleast 4-6 months
for a barely tested app( As an Android Developer, I can vouch for that). They
got the HTML5 app running in much less time. Having a lot of resources doesn't
mean better quality work. More often than not, small teams are deliberately
allotted such tasks to maintain homogeneity in design and code architecture. A
mobile app is special type of software where the UI is very close to the other
components(i.e Event Handling, Models etc.). Putting a large number of
developers on it won't make it go any faster. Think of that scenario: 200
people working on a mobile app, pumping out features and testing
sequentially!!How would that even work?

~~~
tbranyen
I think you misunderstood my point. Facebook has the resources to have a
mobile and native app developed concurrently. I did not mean throwing more
developers at a problem to get it completed faster.

In my opinion he was just issuing blanket statements to warm the cold reality
that Facebook doesn't care about quality.

------
antirez
The problem with apps developed in HTML5 that is not stressed enough IMHO is
that the iOS API is good, while the HTML5 API to do a lot of advanced stuff is
still limited. In short to develop a native application _does NOT take more
time than developing one in HTML5_ , at least for iOS devices. I can tell this
first-hand as I used to advice an iOS/Android software company in the past,
composed mainly of friends of mine, and in three years of projects the native
approach always won: better responsiveness, more access to lower level
primitives when needed, native look and feel, easy of development.

And I'm talking about a small startup. To take the HTML5 approach to develop a
mobile application for a very large company is simply silly IMHO, and Facebook
CEO is right that this was an huge error in their side.

~~~
maratd
> develop a native application does NOT take more time than developing one in
> HTML5

Unless you already have an HTML5 desktop app. In which case, the only thing
you're doing is modifying the UI for touch-based input and a smaller screen
... which doesn't take much time at all.

Facebook's problem was that their app sucked. It didn't suck because it was
HTML5. It sucked because it was done poorly.

~~~
antirez
For an HTML5 desktop app to become a _good_ HTML5 mobile app usually the
changes are so big that you end anyway with a different set of code generating
the output for the two "sides".

It does not matter that's HTML+CSS+JS both sides, the device, the interaction,
the screen real estate, and the _user behaviour_ when seeing this content in
mobility is different.

Actually the risk is that trying to make an HTML5 desktop app also good for
mobile is that you overlook a lot of good interactions that are not natural
consequences if the starting point is the desktop app.

~~~
maratd
> For an HTML5 desktop app to become a good HTML5 mobile app usually the
> changes are so big that you end anyway with a different set of code
> generating the output for the two "sides".

I'm actually working on this right now.

HTML and CSS served to both desktop and mobile are identical. HTML is just
headers and an empty body tag. CSS has shared code and @media specific to each
interface.

Every visual element is built through JavaScript/DOM.

Javascript is split into two sections/folders. Logic and visual. Mobile and
Desktop share the logic javascript, but not the visual.

Everything you can do on the desktop, you can do on mobile. The only
differences are in how the visual elements are presented.

~~~
nl
_I'm actually working on this right now._

Having been down this path before, I predict you will find that the "last 10%"
of those small, annoying things that don't quite work like native mobile apps
in HTML5 will take the same amount of time to fix as developing the rest of
the app.

If you don't think this is the case then either you aren't far enough along to
hit the problems or your app doesn't make heavy use of hardware (which - given
that it is also a desktop app - it sounds like it probably doesn't). In the
second case then using HTML5 makes good sense.

~~~
maratd
> your app doesn't make heavy use of hardware

Bingo. Would be surprised if it lagged on hardware from 10 years ago.

------
Silhouette
I suspect history will show their three biggest mistakes to be:

1\. Allowing an IPO that was vastly overpriced.

2\. Keeping Zuckerberg in the CEO role for too long.

3\. Taking their users for granted.

Obviously the first has seriously damaged their credibility, and with it their
ability to hire and retain people who could solve their problems and grow the
business.

I believe the second has a similar effect. Aside from the catastrophe of the
IPO, Facebook don't appear to be going anywhere strategically. The cat is out
of the bag in terms of cost effectiveness (or lack thereof) of Facebook ads
compared to alternatives like Google. And generating ad revenue on small-
screen mobile is bound to be harder, whether you're using HTML5 or anything
else, because the physical screen size only provides so much space.

The third will probably be what finally kills them. As long as they can
maintain the critical mass of users, the "everyone's on Facebook because
everyone's on Facebook" effect, they can get away with a lot. But no-one using
Facebook goes there for the ads, and no-one really likes all the privacy
invasion. These things are merely tolerated, and only up to a point, because
people like being sociable and right now Facebook lets them keep in touch with
their friends and family more conveniently than anyone else.

So when Zuckerberg says "Over the next three to five years, the biggest
question on everyone's mind is really going to be how well Facebook does with
mobile"[1], I think perhaps he's getting ahead of himself. The biggest
question I would ask, if I were a potential investor, is whether Facebook will
still have that critical mass of users in three to five years, or whether,
like every popular social forum on the Web before them, they will have been
disrupted by the new shiny.

[1] <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19565937>

~~~
pbreit
I disagree pretty strongly on all three points.

The post-IPO share price decline is bad but I have not seen much, if any,
evidence that it has hindered the ability to hire and retain employees. In
fact, an easy case can be made that the smaller valuation creates much more
upside for the RSUs that Facebook issues.

Mark is one of the premier CEOs of his generation. Removing him would be
completely insane. He is, by far, the single most responsible for having
created a $60 billion company, something few can ever even hope to do.

Facebook is extremely customer-focused and I don't think the privacy dust-ups
suggest strongly otherwise. It's fashionable but trite to think Facebook will
got "the same route" as properties before it. Pretty much the same thing gets
said about any lasting company. It doesn't take much intelligenc or curiosity
to consider that's not always the case.

~~~
Silhouette
_The post-IPO share price decline is bad but I have not seen much, if any,
evidence that it has hindered the ability to hire and retain employees._

Please note that those three points were my projections for how history will
look back on the company. I'm not claiming there is some mountain of robust
scientific evidence to support my position right now.

Having said that, anecdotes predict the real data surprisingly often, and
there doesn't seem to be any shortage of Facebook people who aren't impressed
at half of the money they thought they had to fund their big house purchases
disappearing before they could do anything about it. And of course, it's still
relatively soon after the IPO, and a lot of the funds are only starting to
become available around now. You wouldn't expect a mass exodus when a lot of
money was still locked up.

As for recruiting new people, again I don't suppose Facebook are about to
disclose hard data that makes them look bad, but where has the buzz gone? Pre-
IPO, everyone and his brother seemed to want in, presumably in part because of
the potential for a huge pay-off that everyone expected Real Soon Now. Without
that incentive, and with plenty of other new businesses competing in the
market that don't have Facebook's baggage, I find it hard to believe that they
are still attracting the same quantity and quality of applicants as they did
say 2-3 years ago.

 _Mark is one of the premier CEOs of his generation. He is, by far, the single
most responsible for having created a $60 billion company, something few can
ever even hope to do._

Is he, really? Or was he just in the right place at the right time, and if it
hadn't been him and Facebook, it would have been someone else and their start-
up instead?

As for being a $60B company, I think you're a little out-of-date. They're down
to just over $40B already. In any case, I'm more inclined to judge big tech
companies by how much money they actually make and not some random number the
markets generate and label "market cap". And as of the first earnings call
since going public, Facebook were actually _making a loss_.

Obviously that wasn't a typical earnings period because of the various stock-
related factors, but they're taking roughly $1B per quarter in revenues, and
making around $300M per quarter of profit after adjusting for the one-offs[1].
At that rate, to justify their current $40B valuation, they would need to
sustain that level of profitability for over _30 years_ , or increase
profitability through growth.

But where will this growth come from? By Zuckerberg's own admission, the
market is increasingly moving to mobile for their social networking; that
limits the opportunities to show as many ads. Their growth in user numbers has
slowed to a crawl, because there are only so many people in the world to sign
up and some of the ones who did sign up are going to get bored and do
something else. And the return on investment for on-line advertising is
falling over time, a pattern which has been evident for quite a while now,
which is a third threat to a business model like Facebook's.

In short, I don't think Facebook are anything like a $60B company. If you do,
I assume you're investing heavily at this point, since you'll surely see a 50%
ROI?

 _It's fashionable but trite to think Facebook will got "the same route" as
properties before it. Pretty much the same thing gets said about any lasting
company. It doesn't take much intelligenc or curiosity to consider that's not
always the case._

Perhaps not. But usually it is, particularly in entertainment industries, and
particularly in fast-moving tech industries. Ten years ago, Microsoft were
riding high after the release of Windows XP, Apple were a has-been, a couple
of guys had started a little company called Google that was attracting a bit
of attention as an alternative search engine, and Facebook wouldn't even exist
for several years.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/technology/facebook-
report...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/technology/facebook-reports-a-
loss-but-its-revenue-beats-expectations.html)

~~~
pbreit
Your using the wrong FB share count. Despite what some sites report, the
correct number is 2.74 billion which means $57 billion at current price.

~~~
Silhouette
I don't think it matters. By the argument I gave in my last post, they
probably aren't worth anything like $40B. If the market cap figures everyone's
quoting don't take some of the shares into account and the real number would
be $57B, that just makes the valuation even more implausible.

~~~
pbreit
Your incorrect corrections were rather matter-of-fact. And we are discussing
the notion of Mark continuing as the CEO, not the plausibility of the
company's current market value.

~~~
Silhouette
To be fair, I still can't find a single source to back up your higher figure,
while I can find dozens with a quick Google search that quote a market cap of
around the $40B that I and at least one other poster who replied to you were
using. If you want the $60B you stated to mean something other than the most
common valuation (market cap), you could clarify what exactly you're talking
about instead, or the figure doesn't really further the discussion.

In any case, it still doesn't matter. Your argument for Zuckerberg's
effectiveness is that he has built a very valuable company. Part of my
argument is that it's funny money and the company isn't really that valuable
at all. Whether we're thinking of the same kind of "funny money" doesn't make
any difference to this argument.

------
jonknee
Facebook has made a ton of mistakes, HTML5 does not rank anywhere near the top
(it wasn't even the cause of their problems, there are plenty of well done
HTML5 apps). Their app sucked, but was incredibly popular. Their new app sucks
less and is still incredibly popular.

Because of their other "mistakes", I will not allow their app anywhere near my
devices. A general lack of trust is a mistake that Facebook can't fix.

------
corwinstephen
What I find most interesting here is how so much in depth analysis is coming
out of one, simple statement with a very obvious meaning. You know how people
used to try to analyze the life out of Beatles songs looking for all kinds of
hidden meaning, until one day Paul McCartney straight up said, "There is no
meaning other than what's on the surface level."? I'm getting that same vibe
here.

Mark said they bet too heavily on HTML 5. Did that mean the people who wrote
the HTML 5 standards failed them? Or that Google and Apple failed them for
writing code that couldn't sufficiently run HTML 5 apps? Or that they
overestimated their engineers' abilities to write good HTML 5 apps? Or that
they thought HTML 5 was going to be something that it isn't?

Honestly, I don't think he meant any of those things. There is no hidden
meaning here: They used HTML 5. It didn't work they way they'd hoped. Now
they're using something else. That's it. End of story.

Props to the guy for finding something that wasn't good and fixing it. That's
what a CEO is for.

------
programminggeek
It's not a surprise that a web software company would want web software to run
and win everywhere, it's the same reason c++ devs want to write web apps in
c++ even if that might be a terrible idea. In the end, the lesson is clear,
you get what you optimize for. FB optimized for letting their web devs ship
mobile code fast, and they were able to do that. The caveat is that the
product they shipped wasn't that good.

Now they are optimizing for a higher quality product which requires different
developer skills and resources. It seems to be paying off.

Neither strategy was wrong so much as maybe how long they stuck with a
particular strategy.

------
jorangreef
Browser vendors are trying to do too much. Innovation needs to move from top-
down to bottom-up. Browser vendors need to provide just basic access to bare
metal and let OSS do the rest.

One way to help is to ask for lower level OS apis to be exposed by browsers,
so that the open source community can do the rest:

1\. Ask for UDP to be exposed to trusted web apps installed by the user. This
will let the P2P community race ahead without having to wait for WebRTC to get
released and then fixed.

2\. Ask for TCP to be exposed to trusted web apps installed by the user. This
will instantly enable things like SMTP clients running in the browser without
the need for WebSocket proxies/proprietary gateway servers.

3\. Ask for POSIX to be exposed to trusted web apps installed by the user.
This will lead to an explosion of database innovation in the browser.
IndexedDB is design-by-committee. Insist on proper POSIX not the FileSystem
API. Borrow from the Node API. Impedance mismatch is crippling browser
storage.

4\. Low-hanging fruit: ask for LevelDB to be exposed directly
(<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=128865>). Most of the
browser vendors are using LevelDB underneath IndexedDB, and just exposing
LevelDB directly would already be a huge leap forward. No need to wait for the
many IndexedDB bugs to get fixed by browser vendors.

~~~
untog
That sounds like a horrible mess. Presenting users with "Would you like to
give this site access to UDP?" is not a question most users can answer to any
level of competency. Developers dream, users nightmare.

WebGL has been a good example of the difficulties you face when offering low
level access- buggy graphics drivers could result in an all-out crash.

~~~
jorangreef
Your proposed solution and criticism thereof presume that there is only one
way to delegate trust to a web app and that it should entail that the user
understand UDP.

Consider Tim Berners-Lee: [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-
webapps/2012JanMa...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-
webapps/2012JanMar/0464.html)

And Alan Kay: [http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-
wit...](http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-with-alan-
kay/240003442?pgno=2)

------
hoi
Is it a case of HTML5 is a future disruptor, providing platforms don't try to
subdue it in preference to Native? A good example is in mobile tech where a
lot of apps that used data pre 3G performed poorly because the underlying
technological dependencies (the data pipes, memory limitations and processing
power) were not ready. Secondarily, the business models were not ready either
(pay per MB).

Maybe HTML5 is in a similar position, may work well for web, but mobile app
eocsystems are not yet technologically ready for it to be disrupted. We see it
time and time again in history where a new tech takes a while before it
becomes good enough to break through (CMOS vs CCD), (HDD vs Floppy vs Tape).
(Mainframe -> PC -> Cloud)

------
warmfuzzykitten
The iOS app is still crap compared to the web experience. Users can't edit, or
even delete, their own comments. The length of time for likes and comments to
appear is unpredictable. Sometimes very quickly, sometimes users don't see
their own comments for half a minute. Art is displayed oddly. It's almost
always clipped at top and bottom on the page, requiring an extra step to
actually see it. They seem to be under the mistaken impression that mobile
users are like Twitter users, firing shots into the darkness, instead of
curled up on their couches with iPads, composing little essays and looking at
family photos.

~~~
dclusin
Don't forget copy and paste.

------
gregsq
This is all very interesting, but I do think the concentration on HTML5 is
something of a foil. Strategically, I was under the impression that Facebook
was positioning itself to be a third independant force, alongside Apple and
Google. Considering the state of play when facebook started up in 2006, when
users flooded into the browser venue, and where the iPhone hadn't yet been
released, and where the idea of socially contextualless search and data could
be leveraged and superseded by the Facebook social graph, I consider the
decisions made with facebooks mobile strategy to be explicable.

There was, after all, a lot of rumour that Facebook would release their own
phone. This made sense if your objective is to provide an alternative to
mobile OS's, and even more, to overtake your competitors. The belief including
the possibility of evolutionary superiority.

Things change. Google supplies Chrome through the app store despite the
restrictions imposed by Apple, and this has not weakened the power of Google
at the expense of Apple. There are many examples of stepwise cooperation. It
has not diminished their independance. And Facebook likewise should probably
not have been so concerned that acquiescing to the other majors on mobile
would pidgeon hole them as a very very big Instagram style dependant.

Facebook has lost time by being over guarded in my view. On the other hand,
this admission by facebook demonstrates a recognition of a kind of failure. I
suspect the notion that Facebook will grow to be an organisation that is an
evolutionary step beyond Google is now viewed as the real strategic error by
them.

As to HTML5 being a mistake, I could be wrong, but I don't really think that
that's what he actually means. He's trying to explain himself without
admitting some things.

------
mark_l_watson
I am sorry to see any negative publicity for HTML5 adoption but I understand
that FB is a special case. Saving money on mobile development is not a
priority for them.

I think the situation is different for small companies and apps that have many
fewer users: saving money on app development frees resources for content
production.

~~~
chucknthem
I don't think they're saving money by making an HTML5 version. A slow app
means less engaged users who are less likely to see or click on ads. At
facebook's scale, that's potentially tens to hundreds of millions of dollars
lost on the iPhone per year while it probably only costs a couple million to
fund 5 engineers to make a decent native iOS app.

------
guilloche
After some experience with html5 and javascript programming, I feel it is more
and more like hacks, forcing natural application models into html5 with lots
of hacks. Sure, there are applications fitting html5 well, but for many more
others, I begins to doubt that html5 is a real good solution for future.

------
grannyg00se
What is the common understanding when people deliberately tack on _5_ at the
end of HTML? I don't remember people talking about HTML _4_ like that.

Is there some expectation that HTML is suddenly a replacement for native apps?
That's a rather unexpected (to me, at least) positioning of HTML.

------
leeoniya
i hope this doesn't mean they will be forcing everyone into a native app. i
ditched it long ago because their mobile site is quite good and 100x better
for my privacy. same with yelp and youtube. gmail is good also, but i need the
notifications there, so no choice but native.

~~~
elviejo
Me too... their mobile site is better than their native app on android. the
only drawbavck is qhe I try to share a photo it uses the native app.

~~~
leeoniya
i share photos by emailing them to the special fb status address. it's tiny
bit more of a hassle, but i dont do it very often.

------
pixelcort
Weren't the issues with their use of HTML5 more related to the lack of proper
asset caching (CSS/JS), not so much the performance of the rendering and code
execution?

When I used their app at the time, I always found myself waiting for the CSS
for each view to load.

------
Uchikoma
What Mark Zuckerberg really said:

“When I’m introspective about the last few years I think the biggest mistake
that we made, as a company, is betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to native…
because it just wasn’t there. And it’s not that HTML5 is bad. I’m actually, on
long-term, really excited about it. One of the things that’s interesting is we
actually have more people on a daily basis using mobile Web Facebook than we
have using our iOS or Android apps combined. So mobile Web is a big thing for
us.”

[http://blog.tobie.me/post/31366970040/when-im-
introspective-...](http://blog.tobie.me/post/31366970040/when-im-
introspective-about-the-last-few-years-i)

------
captn3m0
Slightly offtopic, but this is what I hate about tech reporting:
<http://i.imgur.com/TYyKD.png>

There is an article for every statement that zuck made onstage. Getting
pageviews is a priority, I guess.

------
pothibo
The main problem with native development is how you are not as flexible as
your HTML counterpart. Even with the massive amount of capital that Facebook
has, a full native app would always be behind.

Obviously, I don't work at Facebook so I don't know all the details, but I
remember when Joe Hewitt built the native Facebook app, while it was awesome,
it was lacking many features 4 months after it's release.

Since developing on iOS can take as much as 2 times longer than HTML
development (+ the release cycle with Apple approvement system), it makes
sense, in my mind, that they opted to have as much of HTML 5 code as possible.

DISCLAIMER: My first language isn't english.

~~~
markmm
Why isn't it as flexible? And a native app on a mobile device shouldn't try
and replicate a full blown web app, it should have only the appropriate
features that you would use on the go, but it should do these well and be
snappy (read native).

~~~
pothibo
Maybe for you, but the general public expect the same feature set. They can be
presented in a different matter, but in the end they need to match. Look at
the comment here, some people are complaining about lack of feature on the
current app.

------
bonaldi
It occurs to me that if someone came out with a new technology and said "hey,
you can now describe your entire interface's structure in one markup language,
the visual look in a second language, and the code in a third language, and
then your app will run anywhere that has the required runtime interpreter"
they'd be shouted down faster than you can say "go Swing".

Yet that's essentially what HTML5 apps are all about -describing the interface
in markup and processing it at runtime. In what way is native not _always_
going to be better for a given platform?

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fpp
Guess what he's actually saying is that if you want to created "walled
gardens" and locking-in users HTML5 is not the way.

So if you want to collect fees from publishers, don't own the browser or the
OS (and are not the content creator) - use a closed app.

From the viewpoint of FB this might be (a short-sighted) way forward. It's not
in the interest of the publishers and content providers - but again that
seemingly doesn't bother FB.

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code_duck
I'd say their biggest mistake is filtering the news feed by presumed interest.
I talk to normal person after normal person who finds facebook increasingly
more useless because this algorithm does not work correctly.

I sure am tired of hearing people talk about 'html5' as if the situation of
native vs. browser apps is really any different now than it has been for the
past 5 or 10 years.

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alifaziz
Instead it's sometimes better to build an app on top of its native environment
from the early days rather than spending enormous time to figure out the best
workaround for life. You might choose the tool you're most comfortable with to
build everything, at the same time just never ignore the quality that the
users will experience.

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DigitalSea
A bad mechanic will always blame his tools. A saying the Facebook development
team should print out, frame and hang in their building for all to see. Maybe
Facebook should have asked the LinkedIn development team to build their app
for them because they obviously know nothing about web development.

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pedalpete
I've got both iPhone and android phone, and I always noticed strange scrolling
and slow response on the iphone when using the html facebook app.

I don't see these issues with the android version, and it doesn't seem like
Facebook is jumping at getting a native android app out there.

Is HTML really to blame?

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mbell
Ditching the HTML5 app was a good call but _please_ fix the atrocious way the
new app mangles images with the resizing/stretching. It really kills the speed
of the overall experience when I have to enlarge every image to have any clue
what its a picture of.

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brackin
This was just a strategy for Mark to downplay Facebook's troubles. Avoiding
talking about Facebook's other problems by pushing HTML5 as their biggest
mistake and saying how it's now fixed. This gives them more time and calms
investors down.

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mcpoulet
For those interested, here is the specific quote on video from Techcrunch's
live : <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBp_xCGIATk>

------
se85
_That_ is facebook's biggest mistake?

Is he blind or just wilfully ignorant?

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pjmlp
Finally someone gets it.

Applications should be done natively.

HTML is for documents.

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Kilimanjaro
Sure, blame it on HTML5, the voiceless culprit. Blame it on the janitor, the
office assistant, the programmer.

But never dare you touch a C*O for the failure of a corporation!

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pyrotechnick
This is absolute nonsense.

Here's an example of what a small team + HTML5 is capable of: <http://ro.me>

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goggles99
I find it amusing that everyone tries to "interpret" what Zuckerberg is
saying. It is in pretty clear 3rd grade English folks. Don't try to spin
things too much. Of course there are always agendas, do you think that Steve
Jobs didn't have agendas? I did not hear much reinterpretation of his
statements in his latter years...

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drivebyacct2
I'm already seeing weird conclusions drawn from this. Anyone can tell you, the
mobile web app for Facebook worked. Well. It was very, very fast and looked
nearly pixel for pixel like the "native" Android app.

Thus, it seems pretty silly to act as if HTML5 is incapable.

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markmm
They are a bunch of PHP hackers, is it any wonder they can't write decent
native apps?

