
Facebook's Three New Products - hunterowens
https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150223135777131
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pstack
I don't see any products, there. I just see a couple of lame features. Skype
and group chat. Skype already does Skype, so I'm not sure why I'd load up
Facebook just so I could skype through a webpage, instead. My IM client has
done group chat for years, so I'm not sure why I'd load up facebook just so I
could chat with a group of those people, either.

This kind of falls in line with my confusion as to why people ruin their
websites with all these components and hooks into Facebook. They claim that
they need Facebook Likes and Logins and Discussions in their websites, because
Facebook drives traffic. Even if they hate it, they have to succumb to it. You
know, for generating traffic. My question remains - why do you want to try
appealing to a group of people to whom Facebook is "the internet" and who do
everything through Facebook? Those people aren't going to make a point of
going to your website again, unless someone links them to it a second time
down the road. It seems like a lot of resources (not to mention website screen
real-estate) given up for very little desirable return.

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phillco
When I was in high school, almost everyone used AIM. Then Facebook Chat came
out and practically crushed it. Why? It wasn't better (it was far, far, worse,
actually — you couldn't chat with somebody without one of you complaining
about it), but _everyone was there_. It became the defacto way to reach
people. It was successful for the same reason Facebook was successful.

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pavel_lishin
> everyone was there

This is exactly why I turned chat off. I have no desire to be contacted by old
high school classmates who happen to be bored and browsing facebook, and see
me pop up.

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siddhant
Yes but people who are bored and browsing Facebook and don't follow technology
minute by minute, outnumber people like us by a huge margin. Facebook
launching these three (not so new) features just means that its making video
calling more accessible to other people, which means its probably going to
work for them.

(Personally, I still feel surprised whenever I see anyone even _using_
Facebook chat.)

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jonathanjaeger
I use Facebook chat to talk to close friends because sometimes it's more
convenient than picking up a phone to talk to someone out of the country.
Allows for more random conversations. Having the Skype feature is an added
bonus, no one's requiring you to use it. Just because FB chat is more buggy,
that doesn't mean the convenience doesn't highly outweigh the disadvantages.
Logging into a different chat client would be for chat-only, while FB isn't.

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michaelchisari
Given their social networking dominance, their swimming pools filled with vc
money, and the top engineers working for them, does anyone else feel like
Facebook are underachievers?

Considering they had to have known about G+ for a while before it launched,
you would think they would really hit something out of the park in terms of
competitive features. These are all pretty lackluster, imho.

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MartinCron
Facebook just works pretty darn well, though. The application is almost always
responsive, it's extremely polished, and it's always getting a bit stronger in
what it offers.

If that's underachieving, sign me up.

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clarkbox
"Facebook just works pretty darn well" i guess you have never interacted with
their platform/api?

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MartinCron
Shallow api integration (like button, send button) just works pretty darn
well.

You are correct, though. I, along with most people who use facebook, haven't
had to do any deeper platform/api integration.

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Newky
Also, I went with the setup, and not only did facebook not support linux, it
doesn't detect I'm on a linux system and started to download a .EXE file!

Feeling some pressure from google + ?

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nubela
same thing. i thought that was complete fail on their end. a .exe? come on.

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Newky
Not even as much as a "Sorry your operating system isn't supported at this
stage!" watch this space type message, just an in your face EXE download!

Used to being a second class citizen but most sites of recent years have a
recognizer at the very least!

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dreamux
While I can appreciate (in fact, I probably don't) the technical difficulty of
delivering a chat/video service to a userbase of 750M; these simply aren't
compelling innovations for most (especially younger) people. Of particular
note, these features aren't sticky (the usability of these features is common
to _many_ other services) nor do they raise particularly high barriers to
entry for competitors (Google has already nailed these services at large
scales, integrating them into G+ is probably trivial). What FB (or Google for
that matter) needs to nail is social search based on the graph of what your
friends are doing/reading/buying... this is one area where FB has a distinct
early advantage (they have more mature social graphs). I'm convinced social
search will be the single feature that displaces or entrenches FB, not chat.

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dmbass
Most people's social graphs are too small (130 people) to be useful. Well we
will use an extended social-graph, you might say, but if you are extending the
social-graph, why not include the entire internet? Why would my social-graph
contain better (more accurate and relevant) information about doing a thing
than doathing.com?

The social-graph is a reduced set of the internet. It is probably easier to
search, but how will the results be better than Google?

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guimarin
I think you are mistaking how to integrate the social graph into search. You
don't do it by exclusively searching within the social graph, you use the
social graph to augment your traditional search. The best way for me to show
you what I mean is for you to look at the attempts blekko is making. Create an
account, and connect your facebook profile, wait 1 hour, and then do searches
with "/likes" appended. You'll still get mostly normal results but the
instances where a friend has liked a site will be featured more prominently.
Facebook has not been able to "just make a search engine" with the social
graph because making a traditional search engine is a non-trivial challenge.

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r00fus
Hasn't google already taken a huge step towards this with their +1 initiative
(which is obviously tied to G+)?

With Google's velocity, I think they're probably going to get to "social
search" first (good luck to Blekko, but reliance on FB is not going to scale -
especially when FB looks to monetize - social search is their meal ticket).

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guimarin
Is it me or does Zuckerberg really excel at being boring? I guess I don't
watch many CEOs announce new products but that was painfully boring and
pedantic.

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wccrawford
His voice is a bit whiny, and that isn't helping. But I think it's also the
slide-show based presentation. And the repeatedly talking about how awesome
his partners and employees are. We get it. We didn't come here for that. We
want to be shown the exciting features.

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guimarin
I understand fully his motives, drum up support and excitement about his IPO,
but no matter how hard he tries, he does not have Jobs charisma or skill. He
should start getting it by reading Nancy Duarte's books on presentations.

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qq66
You assume he wants it. He, and many other successful businessmen, are doing
just fine without it.

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mike-cardwell
What? This is their "awesome" announcement? Is this some sort of a joke? Even
techies aren't going to be interested in this, let alone normal users...

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juliano_q
Unfortunately, I think it flows the other way. "Normal" users will probably
use it, and some techies may use it too just because their "normal" friends
use it.

I think I will never use it because I almost dont use video chat (Hangout can
change that) but I see my mother using it to talk with her sisters. She
currently uses Skype, but using only Facebook will be much easier for her.

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Creyels
I think it's quiet interesting how quickly things change and how you see
companies differently and google reinvented their image in such a short period
of time.

If you asked me a year ago if I would say which was the cooler, younger, more
innovative and most promising company - Google or Facebook - I would have said
4:0 Facebook for sure.

Now, I would say:

Cooler? I have a passion for design - so Google+ is by far winner here. In
addition, you can say what you want, but with the invitation restriction they
got what they wanted - buzzed.

Younger? When you compare the new design from Google to the Facebook design
and consider the implementation of cutting edge web technology (advanced html5
etc.) - for sure it's google!

More innovative? Of course Facebook has a point for focusing the development
of a framework in which other companies can build on - but on the other hand,
that's by definition not much innovation by themselves - so google+!

Most promising? Only time can tell..

I don't know exactly why I see Google in a whole new light now.

Maybe it's because of their stunning design and UX (sorry for repeating, but
it's gorgeous), maybe it's because of their underdog position with Google+ or
maybe it's because Facebook with it's dry and subtle and boring design and
it's cooperations with "uncool" players like microsoft is not taking risks
anymore. They cannot risk their large userbase and got to stay mainstream.
That could be the chance for Google+ to conquer, at least, the younger crowd.

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callmeed
Download and install a .jar file for Mac users? Yeah, my mom is gonna choose
that over FaceTime ...

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bennesvig
The video chat feature will ensure that my Facebook chat stays closed so
random people don't pop up wanting to video chat.

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username3
Get started at <http://www.facebook.com/videocalling>

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rokekr
Sorry, something went wrong.

We're working on getting this fixed as soon as we can.

~~~
athesyn
I'm in the UK. Maybe it hasn't launched here yet?

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rokekr
I'm in the States

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marcamillion
Meh. Nothing much to see here. This looks like Google Chat - video calling,
group chat, seeing who you last spoke to.

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smackfu
For those drawing comparisons: Facebook has 500 million users. How many does
Google+ have?

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nkassis
That's not even worth wasting time at answering. Look Google doing a great job
of rebranding it's services. Google already had video chat for a while now. If
you have gmail you have video chat. I don't get why facebook is just getting
around to doing it. And google didn't need skype to do it.

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brudgers
Despite all of the hype about video chat and circles versus lists, to me the
big announcement looks like group chat - which seems kind of stupidly obvious.
Thinking about it, Google may have missed the mark by throwing video into the
equation - unlike is the case with video, when people don't have to get
dressed to be part of a discussion based on text. It almost looks like Google
heard that Facebook was working on group features and video and assumed that
they would be integrated.

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tghw
I may be mistaken, but I think that's part of the idea with G+; you post an
update to a specific circle and you basically have a chat with that circle.

~~~
brudgers
[IHNBITG+] My understanding Circles aren't reciprocal, so I don't really see
how circles could map onto group chat.

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toddy
OK, the question I have here is about monetization. Who will get more money
from this deal - Facebook or Microsoft/Skype and how? Skype has not been
profitable for so many years (although they charge for phone calls and have
ads), and I don't see this moving it closer to the goal. Also, if FB allows
group video-chat for free why would I pay Skype the subscription fee - I will
just call from Facebook.

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Zakuzaa
Skype has been profitable, I think.

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toddy
No. Skype lost ~$7M last year and has close to $700M in debt. This was the
biggest objection on the price MS paid to acquire it. See
<http://mashable.com/2011/05/10/microsoft-acquires-skype/>

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Apocryphon
Looks like video chat is the hot new battleground again. Facebook Skype vs.
video GChat vs. Apple FaceTime/iChat/iMessage vs. Microsoft Skype(?)

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togasystems
Microsoft Skype just partnered with Facebook .... and Twitter will use Apple
FaceTime ...

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Apocryphon
They're forming tagteams? I wonder if any other partnerships will emerge.

I also said Microsoft Skype to distinguish it from FB- didn't know that FB and
MS have been collaborating. But on second thought, it really is going to be
Microsoft Skype from here on out. Or rather, 2012 Microsoft Skype Home Edition
7 with .NET Windows Live integration.

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yhlasx
Let's just stop predicting things and see what happens. I guess everyone had
enough Groupon, Bitcoin and G+ vs FB stories.

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philfreo
[https://www.facebook.com/notes/philip-su/building-video-
call...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/philip-su/building-video-
calling/10150229123673920)

"Although I was the only full-time engineer on the video calling project, I
had help from Paul Shen, Rahul Iyer, and Vijaye Raji."

~~~
minikomi
That's ... strikingly familiar.

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minikomi
The comment stream is interesting, particulary because I've been seeing a lot
of "google + hasn't made any impact outside tech circles" type comments around
the place. People are looking at this just as Google would like them too.

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togasystems
What does this mean for all of the group chat companies that have launched
recently?

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rokhayakebe
Skype has just handed over their business just as AOL did with their search
engine.

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kragen
Well, so now we know why Google+ launched last week.

Doesn't look like they do group videochat?

Group chat is really, really important. But it's what we've always used
Facebook for; it was just structured as "comment threads".

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ThomPete
It's interesting.

The very first feature they show. Is the one that Skype implemented which a
lot of people hated. Personally I think it's a great great feature. But it is
a feature.

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mun2mun
Does it mean that skype just got 750 million p2p node?

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tomp
Finally, the monopoly is over. Long live competition!

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VuongN
Bringing Your Friends to Bing: Search Now More Social is one of the popular
stories. I'm not sure if I trust that list of "popular stories"

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rnernento
Pretty unimpressive... Don't they have some of the greatest minds in the world
working on this stuff?

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badclient
What's the end game?

MS acquires fb?

Skype makes a killing off fb users for premium subscription and gives fb a
cut?

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guimarin
MS can't/doesn't need to acquire facebook. they have a large stake in the
company due to their early stage $270m investment. Facebook is too expensive
at this point for MS to buy.

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Zakuzaa
Stake ain't large. ~1.5%ish

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wallnutboy
My god, Mark really isn't that good at this CEO schtick is he.

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hippich
quote from one commenter: "It sucks! Ask me to download an EXE , while I am in
GNU/linux. It is shitty M$ stuff."

