
Message from Facebook: this could be war - rbanffy
http://espresso.economist.com/b10a2a12bd626d144ac39e21c894fd4f?%3F=fsrc%3Dscn%2Fesp%2Ftw&fsrc=scn%2Fesp%2FTW
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nakedrobot2
Ugh.

At least the world has managed to have "Email" as a standard, a medium, that
is not controlled by any huge corporation's grubby claws.

Why not with chat? What happened to this? Why is there a war for my data with
these big companies, who do NOT have our best interests in mind, and never
will?

Why can't we have a federated standard for chat, controlled by no one? It
seems that we have come close at various times but it has never happened. Will
it ever happen? Or is it already too late?

~~~
lmm
Because Jabber is awful but too many people were so enthusiastic about its
open-source nature that it blinded them to its faults (specifically poor
groupchat and a bunch of bad choices about the behaviour when logging in from
multiple clients at the same time).

I don't think it's too late. I know the people working on
[http://matrix.org/](http://matrix.org/) and I trust them to get the
technology right. But as we know, popularity depends on a lot more than the
technology.

~~~
NoGravitas
Thanks for the link to matrix.org. I hadn't heard of it, and I wish them
success. I don't think XMPP is awful, and I think the reasons for its failure
have been political/social/cultural rather than technical, but if Matrix can
get more traction, then more power to them.

~~~
oddvar
Please come ask any questions on
[https://matrix.org/beta/#/room/#matrix:matrix.org](https://matrix.org/beta/#/room/#matrix:matrix.org)
\-- or #matrix on freenode which is bridged to the same matrix "room"!

(disclaimer: I work on Matrix)

------
ColinWright

        Facebook is expected to say that it will turn its
        app - called Messenger - which has 500m users, into
        a "platform". That means others will be able to
        develop software for it (for gaming, hotel bookings,
        tickets and so on).
    

Doesn't FaceBook have form in encouraging people to use its interfaces and
facilities, and then either cutting them off or starting to charge
unexpectedly? I wonder what guarantees they will give that they will provide
continuity of service.

Certainly I'd be incorporating an exit strategy, and my game plan would be to
leverage off FB to start with, to grow as fast as possible, develop my own
community and eco-system, and then be able to shed FB and replace it with
something else.

I wouldn't trust them.

But that's just me. I'm interested to see what the HN community thinks.

~~~
danso
There is no such guarantee. Right now, the publishing industry is in its own
conundrum on how to deal with Facebook. FB is reportedly in talks with content
providers, including the New York Times, to publish content directly on FB's
platform...the ostensible reason being that it provides a better user
experience. Publishers would get more eyeballs and presumably some cut of the
ad revenue, and publishers who don't go for this, well, they may find their
external content more and more deprioritized. As the Atlantic pointed out [1],
back in 2011, Facebook announced "social reader" apps and news orgs jumped
on...and when FB decided less than a year later to drop the effort, well, all
those efforts were wasted.

FB is in a much stronger position now, and conversely, publishers have only
gotten weaker. Ideally, publishers would take the tack that you've
described...FB will undoubtedly provide some kind of API that would make it
easy for news orgs to export their CMS data as easily as they do for their
print and web editions...if publishers don't like how things are going, then
they just pull out, and their API points to another platform.

The problem is that publishers are very weak financially and have shown very
little ability to innovate. And consumers have shown mostly apathy about the
way their daily attention is diverted to social networking and linkbait...so
news publishers have serious existential issues on top of their financial
ones.

1\.
[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/facebo...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/facebook-
as-a-press-baron/388559/)

------
NoGravitas
This is so depressing. There's already a standard, interoperable,
decentralized instant messaging protocol
([http://xmpp.org/](http://xmpp.org/)). And it does things none of the
competing walled gardens do, like real private conversations
([http://wiki.xmpp.org/web/OTR](http://wiki.xmpp.org/web/OTR)). Why can't
people just compete to produce the best user experience on top of XMPP?

~~~
zimpenfish
I was going to say that Facebook Messenger does work with XMPP but double
checking just now, it seems that was deprecated a year ago and will disappear
at the end of next month. Huh.

[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/chat](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/chat)

~~~
oddvar
it's a real shame - both facebook and google tried to use XMPP but have since
removed support.

~~~
zimpenfish
I think Google still work with XMPP but not 100%.

[https://developers.google.com/talk/open_communications](https://developers.google.com/talk/open_communications)

[https://xmpp.org/2015/03/no-its-not-the-end-of-xmpp-for-
goog...](https://xmpp.org/2015/03/no-its-not-the-end-of-xmpp-for-google-talk/)

------
tomp
In the UK, there have been quite a few TV ads from Facebook recently.

Yesterday, after watching another one, my girlfriend commented: "Even Facebook
is making ads now - this tells us a lot about how well things are going for
them."

~~~
spacemanmatt
Heh, good point. Google advertises on Google but I have hardly seen a Google
ad outside of a page that displays Google ads. Disclaimer: I don't watch TV.

~~~
blowski
I've seen loads of Google ads - on TV, in the press, and especially outdoor
advertising. It's typically conceptual stuff, about security, privacy, etc.

In addition, I get a lot of direct mail with vouchers for using AdWords.

------
panamafrank
Is this "espresso" format the future for the economist? There should be a link
to the full article at least, I read this rag purely for the analysis and this
format is a bit short on that.

here it is in full: [http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-
economics/21646802...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-
economics/21646802-facebook-enters-booming-market-mobile-payments-unfriending-
cash)

~~~
Djonckheere
The Economiszt wants you to subscribe to ead the the full article, which is
here:
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/03/messagi...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/03/messaging-
apps)

------
aikah
This is the kind of market where UI/UX is the single most important thing in
the app. I personally began using MSN messenger 10 years ago , and moved to
skype because I felt skype was easier to use, had a better UI . It was simply
beautiful compared to MSN messenger. On the other hand, the skype client on my
android is just shitty as hell, it might have changed since but I understand
why skype doesn't dominate the mobile space.

I tried a lot of "raw" XMPP clients, most of them felt like the developer was
in charge of the UI/UX. It felt like shit.

If an open standard wants to win, it has to have a very good client,with a
perfect UX/UI.

I understand it's a bit difficult for designers that aren't developers to
contribute to opensource code projects. I'm thinking very hard about how such
a tool could be set up,and how can the design workflow and the coding workflow
could be joined seamlessly. I'll come up with something eventually.

------
basicallydan
This is different from the "browser wars", because the thing that people are
trying to access through their choice of messenger app does not look, feel,
and function differently depending on which one they choose. The experience
doesn't _break_ because one chat application decides to implement one feature
and others don't because they aren't _supposed_ to work together.

It's similar, however, in that consumers have a lot of choice, with no one
chat application really being that much better than any other in terms of
features or experience, just that if we could just get everyone on _one_ and
for that _one_ application to continue to improve, everything would be great,
in theory.

This isn't going to stop any time soon.

------
wiremine
As developers we value open apis and interop, but I'm not sure end-users care
that much. They just want to connect with their friends and family, and if
they need to use a different apps to stay connected, so be it.

In a way, I think the device and notification systems are enough for most
people. If I have 5 different message apps, they are all on my phone and they
all notify me when something comes in, so I'm able to stay connected.

------
danbruc
First they separated messaging from the Facebook app where you can have games
and apps and stuff and now they are integrating all that back. Why? Personally
I absolutely prefer a slim messaging app not bloated with more or less
unrelated stuff.

~~~
msl09
My thoughts exactly. Seems like facebook bought Whatsup to bring it to the
ground.

------
probablyfiction
The messaging wars never really ended. It simply moves to new formats as
technology evolves. Through it all, though, IRC carries on. May it always be
so.

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talideon
I'm sick to my back teeth of 'platforms'.

