
Facebook’s insane mobile takeover - chkuendig
http://calacanis.com/2015/01/28/facebooks-insane-mobile-takeover-is-just-beginning/
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briandear
Facebook owning mobile? Not hardly. They have users not because of the quality
of their mobile experience. Their main app is still a POS. And, they still
seem to have an aversion to native development -- their React "native" play is
just a rehash of their earlier HTML 5 experiment. The purchased expertise from
Instagram, etc is helping, but they are buying users, not necessarily earning
them by creating a superior mobile product. The messenger spin off had minimal
purpose except to annoy me. I get message notification on the main app, yet I
have to open another app to read them? Who thought that was a good idea? It is
almost at the same level of annoyance as the Foursquare spinoff of Swarm. Yes,
FB kills it when it comes to users, however the cable companies have a lot of
users too; that doesn't mean they're awesome. Financially Facebook might be
doing really well, but that doesn't necessarily make them some kind of guru
when it comes to mobile. When I think "awesome mobile experience," Facebook
isn't what comes immediately to mind.

~~~
cardiffspaceman
I recently deleted the app and the messaging appendage. When messaging was
integrated, I actually had a situation where messages via Facebook were
essential, and having the notifications set up to audibly alert me was enough
to use up power faster than I could put it back in on a travel day. It seems
like the problems of using Facebook are what you'd expect from a lack of
engineering maturity.

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ecspike
He lost me when he said

"They will add Apps to directly compete with Google, like maps, email, and
productivity (think: Evernote). As well as cloud storage."

Did we already forget the fail that was FB email?

~~~
dlu
I'm not even sure why he thinks they're heading in that direction. Until they
do something like make a big productivity acquisition, I can't see them
shifting over over from social

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jasonmcalacanis
1\. That's exactly what people said about Google before they launched Google
Apps, Docs, etc. "why would Google do this?" \-- the answer was clear: user
engagement and the blurring of personal and professional data/personas.

2\. If you hit scale, the best practices is to try and build as full of a
stack as possible. That's why Microsoft did a search engine, Google did an
Office Suite and why Facebook will do both at some point.

~~~
dlu
1\. I feel like social and productivity are at two ends of a spectrum. Searc,
at least in my mind, is closer to productivity. Still seems unlikely to me
that they'd build it from scratch rather than buy someone.

2\. Interesting that you think of the stack that way. So you think Facebook
will encroach onto Search at some point? What exactly is in the full stack?

And an obligatory reference to Apple, is Apple a different full stack or are
they a short stack without search?

Now I want pancakes

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josephlord
They seem to trying suck up a significant proportion of Android and iOS devs
in the London area. They are producing lots of interesting libraries too,
shame they are Facebook.

~~~
dlu
They do this everywhere with a major office. Silicon Valley is this plus a
handful of other equally huge companies

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graeme
I've noticed a lot of friends are starting to Facebook message rather than
text. You get read receipts, and replies are faster. (I'm in Canada)

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
I don't consider my Facebook application (i.e. wall, timeline, groups, etc.)
usage very high, but my Facebook messenger usage is through the roof. I don't
even have any other way to reach most of my friends or contacts.

I get the impression this is very common among people in their twenties.

Alternatives like Google Hangouts, Snapchat, Line, WeChat, etc. don't have
nearly as many users, at least among my social groups.

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eridius
FB Messenger used to be a part of Facebook. They broke it out into a separate
app. According to the author, the mere act of breaking it out suddenly gains
Facebook an extra 500 million active monthly users. How does that make any
sense? Splitting one app into two doesn't make it worth any more, and double-
counting the users seems completely pointless.

~~~
jasonmcalacanis
I make it clear a couple of times that there are duplicate users in those
numbers. Additionally, I divide the total user count into FB's unique count,
which gives you the number two.

So, of the four Apps Facebook is giving numbers for... users on average are
using two.

Google has a dozen Apps in the store, and there is some overlap as well. This
is the state of the art: one function per App. We'll see a LOT more of this
over time.

In fact, Google just made Docs into a couple of different Apps -- instead of
just one with sheets, docs, presentations, etc.

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misiti3780
"FB will give Snapchat $20b, 30b, and 40b offers over the next two years.
50-50 they get Evan to sell. "

Does anyone else here think a 40B dollar offer for snapchat is kinda, lets
say, out of the realm of possibilities?

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jasonmcalacanis
folks have offered $10b, so 40b is 4x that.

If snapchat grows revenue by 4x they will get that number.

case closed.

~~~
misiti3780
who has offered 10B for snapchat - i thought the highest number was 3B by
facebook

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walterbell
How much of App Install revenue comes from F2P games?

~~~
x0x0
and also, what fraction of mobile is cpi, and of that, what percentage is just
recycled vc money? Because we all know what happened to yahoo during the first
crash. Facebook not breaking those numbers out makes me strongly suspicious
that the number is pretty damn high, and fb mobile revenue -- $2.5B in 4q14,
almost 2/3 of ad revenue -- is very dependent on the, at minimum, frothy
funding market.

~~~
jasonmcalacanis
It's a good observation. I discussed it with some folks who are... well.....
anyway, I discussed it with folks and the "forthy" portion of the install
revenue is very low (overall) to FB revenue. If it all went away it would not
rock the company... low single digit %.

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engendered
_Now, I would say Twitter’s users are worth 2-5x as much as the average FB
users because the product is just much more “upscale.”_

What a strange claim.

As an aside, recently the Facebook app (at least on Android) embedded its own
web browser, so instead of going to Chrome when you followed a web link, it
would open in the Facebook app. You can reconfigure it to use the external
browser, but the power of defaults mean many won't.

This seemingly small change has a big impact because if you open a link you
want to share, the Facebook app restricts you to sharing it via your wall,
versus the traditional Android app where you might share it over hangouts,
Google+, email, etc.

~~~
FlailFast
That small change was enough to get me to uninstall the Facebook app on my
Nexus 5, and while I imagine there are others that felt that way, it certainly
didn't manifest itself in their numbers, leading to some cognitive dissonance
on my part.

The incredible staying power of default behavior being what it is, I'm sure
these continued attempts to grow FB's mobile control on Android will be
ignored/accepted...but it makes me wonder at what point a normal user will say
"enough is enough." What's the threshold for abusive default behavior in an
app? Or a network/platform, for that matter?

~~~
mahyarm
When the annoyance outweighs the benefit.

