

Push Pop Press acquired by Facebook - tlrobinson
http://pushpoppress.com/about/

======
flyosity
Facebook is up to something really big.

Awhile ago they brought on Brandon Walkin
(<http://www.brandonwalkin.com/blog/>) who is, arguably, one of the most
detailed-oriented user interface designers on the planet. He's also a very
talented Cocoa developer and apps that he's worked on have won Apple Design
Awards.

Next, they acquired Sofa, another Apple Design Award-winning design & software
firm who have created some of the best-looking apps for OS X.

Now they nabbed Push Pop Press, founded by Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris, who
were both instrumental to the launch of the iPhone on the software side.

Facebook is building an army of UI designers/developers who 1) used to work at
Apple, or 2) have built apps Apple has deemed best-in-class.

I'd be really surprised if Facebook isn't working on something big to go up
against Apple and Google. There were rumors of a Facebook phone, perhaps
Facebook is building their own hardware and need a world-class design team to
craft its OS? I can't see Facebook sticking all this amazing talent on a
redesign of Photos or Chat, or updating icons in Facebook's iPhone app.

~~~
jkincaid
I doubt Facebook would build a hardware device. Instead, I think they'll do a
'social OS' that uses Android for all the low-level stuff, but with the Google
apps all replaced with apps that have deep Facebook integration (messages,
contacts, photos, etc.).

Microsoft Bing apps (e.g. Maps) could round out the features that FB doesn't
build themselves, and they could use Amazon's Appstore in lieu of Android
Market.

But to your point, it's possible these designers are at work making this
social OS beautiful. Android in the back, iOS in the front.

~~~
cullenking
Facebook won't build their competing phone OS on top of android - Google
controls android and Google is facebook's biggest competitor.

~~~
Steko
"Google controls android"

Meh, they control it to an extent. The core open sourced Android (gingerbread
atm) is clearly "good enough" that all anyone has to do to credibly fork it
and still deliver a high end device is bring as much to the table as Google
itself does.

That's not a herculean task although only a handful of companies qualify and
most of those are better off jumping through Google's hoops to get the full
experience anyway. Facebook probably isn't one that wants to jump through
Google's hoops though.

I'm not saying the FB phone will be a success. Clearly some people want it.
Let's go benefit of the doubt and say it will be technically awesome. Well so
were a lot of other flops. I think a FB phone is one of those things on a
knifes edge that could be a Vista/Zune/Edsel level flop or could be the
iDevice killer every tech pundit has been waiting on for the last decade.

------
americandesi333
I wonder how Mike Matas would feel after a year of being at Facebook...

When I first read about them and heard his TED talk, I really believed in what
he was saying, that they aspired to change the way the world reads. I believed
in his revolution...

So, this is definitely a let down...

~~~
mkramlich
It's easier to change the world after you get Bank.

~~~
lurch_mojoff
Sure, it is. But Push Pop got a ton of publicity partly because of Al Gore and
partly because of Mike's passionate Ted talk, so I presume they would have
been able to get more than enough funding. And of course you can't change the
world if someone does it before you.

Anyway, the folks at Push Pop Press, as well as Sofa and the rest of top tier
design talent that Facebook have been eating up, are smart bunch and I'm sure
they know what and why are they doing. Or it could be the allure of a metric
buttload of money.

~~~
americandesi333
I want to believe that its because Facebook is showing them a bigger 'vision'
but this smells like $$ to me...

People can be smart but sometimes the short-term allure of happiness (in this
case the payout) can harm their long-term growth and impact to the world.

------
pumblechook
Sad to see. This was the only promising execution of ebooks for the tablet
age, and Facebook is where it goes to die? I know they probably got obscene
amounts of cash, but it is still disheartening to see innovations swallowed up
by decidedly non-innovative companies.

~~~
schrototo
While I thought _Our Choice_ was a pretty snazzy product, and I think it's a
shame that they're discontinuing work on their publishing platform, they did
have a somewhat conservative approach to ebooks. No selectable text,
"interactivity" that was pretty much limited to embedded videos and charts,
and so on. What made it special was the incredibly "fluid" interface, meaning
there wasn't a single button or control, you navigated the book purely by
touching what you wanted to move and it worked like magic.

But there's lots of other ways books can be done in a digital format. For one
really excellent example look at Inkling [1]. Now _that's_ revolutionizing a
medium (in this case textbooks).

[1] <http://www.inkling.com/>

~~~
ilovecomputers
Push Pop's first publication did have a novel interface, but it was
fundamentally no different than what we are used to. It was a book with other
forms of media embedded within it.

I can get behind Inkling being revolutionary because it seems to me (focusing
on their Social Learning feature) that it is closer to Vannevar Bush's vision
of the memex. It is like the memex[1] in that it is taking advantage of the
interactivity and social capabilities of current tech to create an interface
that better matches the way we learn. The way we learn indirectly from others
via books (where information is frozen and up to you to learn from it) and the
way we directly learn from each other (mainly communicating about a topic in a
conversational manner).

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think>

------
ivanzhao
Is it a pure talent acquisition? As Push Pop Press's core business (coffee
table iPad books) is so distant from Facebook's. Maybe they want to do
something Flipboard-ish?

~~~
tlrobinson
Sounds like mostly talent:

 _"Although Facebook isn't planning to start publishing digital books, the
ideas and technology behind Push Pop Press will be integrated with Facebook,
giving people even richer ways to share their stories. With millions of people
publishing to Facebook each day, we think it's going to be a great home for
Push Pop Press."_

~~~
bradleyland
It's kind of hard to deny the parallels between Flipboard and tech like what
Push Pop Press has developed. I know a number of people for whom Flipboard is
the preferred method of interacting with Facebook. I'd assume that Facebook
has some means of knowing which applications are using their API the most.
Maybe there's some underlying data here that we can't see, like maybe
Flipboard makes up a lot of Facebook's mobile usage, and we know how important
it is for Facebook to control the user interaction.

/rampant speculation

------
ltamake
The horrible beast swallows up another good idea. :(

~~~
raganwald
At least they aren’t gobbling up a generation of talented youth and putting
them to work plastering optimized and personalized little text ads on
everything ;-)

~~~
statictype
Well, those text ads do let us get, for free, a good mail service and an
oracle that knows all and tells all.

~~~
raganwald
This "free" you speak of is something of a Faustian bargain :-)

------
wallflower
My first thought upon hearing that it was Push Pop Press was education.
Because of their work with Al Gore. Maybe even the predecessor to the TYLIP.
Perhaps it could even be field-tested at the beneficiary school district(s) of
the $100M pledge.

In Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age", a plot device (not central), is The
Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. It is an adaptive AI tutor. To realize TYLIP,
hard AI problems will need to be solved. Yet, it is possible the iPad is a big
step towards a simpler Primer.

"TYLIP is...a book that is powered by a computer so advanced it’s almost
magical, and it teaches children everything. It does this through a fully
interactive story. It teaches you how to read, how to do maths, it teaches you
morals, ethics, even self-defence. ‘Diamond Age’ is a very entertaining read,
mainly because of the TYLIP."

[http://mssv.net/2006/05/01/the-young-ladys-illustrated-
prime...](http://mssv.net/2006/05/01/the-young-ladys-illustrated-primer/)

------
aculver
Mike Matas is awesome. I've been a fan of his work since Delicious Monster and
I hope (if the past endeavors haven't already) that this transaction sets him
up nicely. His photography and videography of his world travels at
<http://mikematas.com/> is amazing and I'd love to see more.

------
flocial
Wow, that's just a straight up talent acquisition maybe with some patents
thrown in for the impending legal meltdown. Remember the first acquisition
Parakey? It was going to be a web OS of some sort so even Grandma can easily
share pictures or something. Instead we got a perennially buggy Facebook
iPhone app. It just goes to show how hard it is for growing companies to find
good talent in the valley.

These are really brilliant people though. Must be amazing to have all those
people in one building. Still, have no idea how Facebook can really bring out
the best of that talent, Apple seems like a lot better place except for their
old school secrecy. I guess it's hard to shine when you have two super novas
like Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parakey>

~~~
hboon
We also got Three20. Not the best framework in the world, but it probably did
more to enable iOS apps than any other non-Apple framework.

------
null_para
On a side topic, how facebook decides to acquire companies? Any idea?

------
startupcto
Congrats on flipping your startup. It's pretty much what everyone is doing
nowadays. Change the world... whatever.

~~~
startupcto
really.. why the downvote ? can't a man be blunt on HN anymore, i have to make
sure i don't hurt anyone feelings isn't this a "dipshite company" in Mike
Arrington's dictionary.

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/15/venture-capital-super-
angel...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/15/venture-capital-super-angel-war-
entrepreneur/)

