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Facebook Smartphone a Dumb Idea, Says Farhad Manjoo
beaverdownunder writes "Farhad Manjoo examines Facebook's rumoured entry into the smartphone market, concluding, 'So what would be the point in using the Facebook phone? Well, remember, it will be cheap. But so are lots of Android phones. If Facebook makes a phone, then, the device will necessarily spark a battle for the low end of the phone market, with each company offering ever-cheaper devices in the hopes of cashing in on some future advertising bonanza. If you're looking for a cheap, ad-heavy phone based on a dubious business model, you should rejoice. Otherwise, try to stifle your yawns.'"
If so, I'm in.
Facebook is probably one of the most well known brands in the world. A facebook branded phone would get lots of sales regardless of how well the phone performed.
Facebook is making a phone because Facebook is a huge brand and people will buy it just because it has the Facebook logo on the case. The target market is clueless Facebook users, the same ones who click "yes" when asked if they would like the latest Zynga crap to invade their privacy and waste their time.
Christ, Farhad Manjoo is thick.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
. . . but consumers are even dumber.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
And why should I care what he thinks?
Not to disagree with Farhad's thesis, but none the less, Farhad may be the worst tech pundit ever. At least pundits of yore, even where their crystal balls were a little cloudy, had some actual tech bona-fides and did at least a bit of original research. Things like, you know, ingratiating themselves into the tech industry they report on. Farhad sits at home and reads tech blogs and summarizes his opinions. You know, like anyone with a computer and an internet connection could do. And do do. You'll learn as much about the tech industry reading random slashdot comments as you ever will by reading Farhad. Maybe Farhad thinks he's doing actual reporting, a new age requires a new approach, blah blah. But the truth is, there's nothing there. Nothing original at all. Nothing but audience-seeking ad-revenue generating blather about popular tech topics. He's the Mary Elizabeth Williams of tech blogs: find out what people are talking about, assemble a bare modicum of knowledge with a few google searches, and write an opinion piece. Slate is completely wasting a perfectly good opportunity to inform and educate.
So why doesnt that apply to anyone looking to launch a new Android phone, or why didnt it apply when Android entered the market after the iPhone?
This is what facebook will do to their phone. It will create a new phone platform with its own API. This API will be compatible with the phone AND the web. In another word, you write a game using this API once, and it will run in your browser, and on your phone. When people make in-game purchase, facebook gets a cut. This is how they will make money on the mobile platform. They won't make any money if facebook is just an app on any phone facebook doesn't own. This is why MarkZ is worrying.
Given that there are far more facebook users than iphone or android combined, if you are mobile game/app developer, would you write your program using this API? I would. Suddenly, facebook can compete with iOS and android for developers attentions. Something RM and MS are trying so hard to do for sometime.
Instead the whole interface will be facebook. If you want to talk to someone, select them from your facebook friends. etc. Apply as appropriate to all other activities you do with smartphones. Other phone systems will still have the facebook 'app' but it will have worse features which will just encourage people to swap to a facebook phone.
You status could be constantly updated with who you are talking with or having multi-text conversations with or even where you are travelling to because it knows your calendar, 'likes', route searches and GPS data. Let's face it, if I have already spread the information that I am excited about going to a concert then if on the day of the concert the phone detects that I'm getting closer and closer to the venue then what is the (extra) harm in sharing that location information?
Not sure if the targetted ads will be (partly) based on info gleaned from voice recognition keywords as well as everything you type and look at but if I was an evil ad broker then that's what I would do if I could get away with it.
But what do I know? I don't have a facebook account.
FB is successful because it's orders of magnitude better than MySpace ever was. Despite it's flaws, it's far better than it's would be competitors.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Says random Slashdot poster
I'd tell a UDP joke, but you may not get it. I'd tell a TCP joke, but I'd have to keep repeating it until you got it.
And why should I care about his opinion?
Is this guy a prominent business person? Someone involved in the telecomm industry? An entrepreneur with a dozen tech companies in his portfolio? Or just some reporter desperate to get some page views?
Facebook was actually a good idea, back when it first started. You had to have a .edu email address to join up, and it became a great way for high school friends that had split up to go to college to stay in touch. Once they started opening it to everyone, companies, and advertisers, it became a bad idea.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Who the fuck is Farhad Manjoo? And why the fuck should I listen to him? What the hell, Slashdot.
As far as I can tell, this entire rumor started because FaceBook was allegedly having discussions with and/or recruiting former/current iPhone/Android engineering staff. Which would also be the case if they were looking to integrate FaceBook and services deeper into the core software of phones--which would make a lot more sense.
The Facebook phone is for people who look at the Internet and communications through a social media lens. They aren't thinking about a smart phone from a technology perspective or even so much as an app perspective. For them, their phone (likely a feature phone with a slideout keyboard, used primarily for texting) is really a social connector used to send text messages. For them, the internet is the web only and social media almost exclusively. They use Facebook a lot, and Facebook messaging and chat instead of email and IM.
I think there are a lot of people out there like this, especially in less well educated circles, lower income groups, among younger people and the technologically unsophisticated.
I know people who had computers but seldom used them -- emailing them was never a good idea, they might read email once a week. Once they discover Facebook, they're on the computer all the time, but almost exclusively on Facebook. It's become their predominant computer activity.
Their cell phone? Probably some ancient flip. When their carrier EOLs it and they have to upgrade, they might find a Facebook phone -- subsidized by advertising to keep it cost competitive with the lowest end phones from both a device AND service perspective.
Anyway, I think this locus of groups would probably find a Facebook phone appealing. To anyone else who remotely knows what a smartphone is or has a use for one otherwise? A non-starter. But thinking of a Facebook phone only in terms of direct competition with other phones is a mistake.
FB stock got its ass kicked last week and there is just constant bad press [..] I'm beginning to think that maybe FB stock price may turn upward.
Of course it may. And then it will crumble, and rise again, and so forth in this fashion. Now before you think that I am being a smartass, here is what I mean (albeit a bit off-topic):
I can see four basic components in this company, and by increasing order of importance they are: a) the server hardware, b) the marketing profile, c) the lawyer layer and d) exploitable user data.
The fact that the stock is "rising" or "dropping" in value is irrelevant: what is relevant, is that there is a stock, and that fb is in the stockmarket: it is essentially now an "immortal" in a corporate sense. Fb may very much so change ownership in the future, and perhaps even see a revamp of its logo (as in a "new-and-changed" product), and that may happen a lot: so the core of it, which is what investors are willing to pump money into, which is user data and profiles, will be "immortal" as well.
That alone guarantees that your data will never ever be deleted, as they have become a valuable commodity- and unless you are a "player" in the stockmarket, or a billionaire looking to acquire it, I don't see why you should care about fb stocks.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
That watching your FB stock lose value in the 'beeeeeellions' must have a more smoothing comfortableness to Zuckerberg on a 5"x3" screen versus a 27.5" screen. Smaller screen == Loses 'feeling' smaller than they are.
Oh and about the phone? Horrible idea.
The original business idea (ignoring the hot-or-not-style one night programming project origin) was to get people together that were in the same classes at their respective universities, but didn't know each other. That way, they could talk about tests, ask each other questions, that kind of thing. It was a great idea - and then they completely removed that option when they realized that only 10% of their user base was using that option, and the rest were just using it to stalk the hotties in their classes.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
If they're making a phone, it's not a business decision; it's simply because Zuck sees it as a "cool" thing to do/have. That's all he's interested in, he has stated it explicitly.
Call me naive, but I've always seen MySpace as a souped-up version of geocities. IOW: a site where you could build up your own homepage. Not a site that's primarily for two-way communication (and try designing a nice "home page" on Facebook - you can't really do this). So I still don't really get all those comparisons between Facebook and MySpace.
for someone who is really into Face Book it might be desirable, that is assuming that it will have special features, pertaining to face book, that you can't get on any flavor of android Face Book app. I mean if it has some sort of built in face book GUI that is much better than android apps in comparison, has ways to manage games such as Farmville and the likes I can actually see it being a hit regardless of phone quality based solely on the ease of Face Book management.
I kinda agree. If there's some truth to the rumor, Facebook is likely planning to rebrand or re-spin (a la Fedora) a smartphone OS with tight Facebook integration. This wouldn't be far from what Google is already doing when it "gives away" Android. Google profits not from selling the OS but in winning an audience for its ad services or data mining projects.
But why go to the trouble of selling a whole phone? Making hardware is a far riskier business than administering a web site, while relatively minimal investment is necessary to replace Google search or Google Play with its Facebook search and app store equivalent. Maybe Facebook will come up with a limited-edition Nexus-like phone but it would be corporate suicide for it to go head to head with the likes of Samsung, HTC or Google Motorola. (Suggested name for the FaceBook phone OS: the FaceBOSS.)
Ignoring the fact that I don't know who this guy is and why I should care about his opinion on Facebook or mobile phones, I'm not going to read the article because of this choice quote:
...spark a battle for the low end of the phone market, with each company offering ever-cheaper devices...
Cheaper? Cheaper than free? The low end of the mobile market is dominated by _FREE_ phones. And we're not talking about garbage throw-away phones - you can get an iPhone 4, which is far from a piece of garbage, for free on many carriers. Of course Android has a wide selection of phones that are available for free from all carriers out there as well. The two dominant smartphone platforms have free offerings - are they going to start paying people to take their phones now?
Sorry, but if someone doesn't get such a basic concept of how the mobile market works - namely that the cheapest phones (notice the plural there) on the market are $0.00 and there's nothing really cheaper than free - then I am pretty certain I don't care one iota what he has to say in regards to anything.
Ignoring the fact that Facebook could benefit from having a phone that provides better content for them..easier input to phone through sylus/keyboard/camera, Have a larger screen to get those adverts people keep talking about without distracting from the content.
Ignoring the fact that Facebook is going to have to compete directly against Google+ as Google embed more social into their platform...that has been dominant for all but the most faithful Apple Fanboy.
Facebook could create a social phone. I personally find the whole idea terrifying but to the suitably narcissistic, and there does seem to be more of them than me. A smartphone is exciting because its always connected...A social phone could be so so much more, think about having zero privacy, your own permanent cctv and electronic tag combined focused solely on you, and the ability to get that information about your friends...or people you admire/like being admired.
Smartphones with $50+/month data plans are reaching saturation in the US at around 50% of the market. If you're willing to pay for one, you probably have one. Growing the market is going to require new incentives in terms of pricing. A "toll-free" or "zero-rating" system where access is paid for by the destination rather than the source is one possibility. FB with its payment platform is a logical candidate for delivering such a system.
Imaging paying $300 for a phone and $10/month with your social networking information subsidizing your data plan....
It'd be expensive to develop the integration and to bootstrap it, but they have the money for it.
they will be immortal until they go bankrupt, or start to lose the various lawsuits, or until the big boys start pulling the plug once they have sucked enough muppet money from FB.
Considering all the technology Facebook has accrued directly and through partners a phone with a lot of nice features should be possible for them to implement. It's also a logical next step. Phones are social nodes in themselves, and mapping the Facebook 'world-in-a-world' onto this should be possible.
It could even be data-only if they wanted to (wifi/data traffic), but I don't think they would take it that far.
Technology mapping from the Facebook's technology chest to the mobile:
Text messaging - Replaced/complemented by Facebook Messenger
Audio chat - Integrated Skype version
Video chat - Integrated Skype version (Technology now in the hands of MS/Skype. Apple has shown us that this is feasible)
Group video chat / audio chat - Integrated Skype version.
Status of your friends reflected on your phone (Eg. approx. location, busy, last locations visited).
Contact list - Facebook friends.
You completely misunderstood. Facebook was a place for high school friends who had lost touch to get back in touch and stay in touch. Finding who you wanted to find was easy - and everyone got on there really fast. And it's obviously a richer way to talk to everyone. Perhaps you don't get it because you're my parents' age and having a "get off my lawn" moment.
Social networks are here to stay. There will always be a single-most popular one for the general population, whether it's Facebook now or something else in the future. It provides something that otherwise doesn't exist - finding people, conveniently communicating and staying in touch with them, reading about them, seeing pictures of them, seeing what they're up to, etc.
they should turn it into a platform for electronic payments between people, a Facebook electronic currency. you prepay an amount to Facebook, then you can transfer money between facebook accounts using NFC or barcode scanning.
If Facebook wants to invest some of its IPO billions competing with Google in the open source phone market then let it. Ideally, Facebook will compete by making its Linux phone development actually open instead of fake open, and thereby blow past Google in terms of fit and finish and usability, with the help of ten times the developer base and ten times less corporate drone UI design. I don't see any reason why one advertising based tech gorilla should make an open source phone and another not.
On the other hand, if Facebook intends to make a phone with an even more closed development model than Google, then Facebook can go to hell.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Ah, but for email to work, you had to have someone collect emails on a list first. Plus, email didn't provide photos to help you put faces to names of your sometimes 40+ classmates.
And when Facebook started, it wasn't the huge data-mining operation it is now. Likes, statuses, apps , locations - none of those existed when Facebook started. It was your college, and your current classes (your previous semesters were archived but available), and a few photos. Hell, I remember classmates laughing when they added the two-word drop-down menu statuses, about how much the FBI was paying to know when "Jim is 'sleeping,'" "Jim is 'at work,'" and "Jim is 'in class.'"
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Facebook may die. But their dataset will live on. If Facebook goes bankrupt, the data (which is valuable) will most definitely be sold to *someone* in order to pay off Facebook's creditors...
The banks made the mistake of letting Zuckerberg price the stock, no doubt in fear that somebody else would grab the deal if they did not. So it went out the door at twice the price it should have. Result: unhappy (serves them right) bank insiders. And some very sad employees holding underwater options. And having to go the much more expensive earn out stock route for new employees because what fool would take Facebook options as of today? But Facebook isn't going to whither away, far from it. Facebook owns one of those precious golden geese: an established network effect. It's a mistake to think Facebook will lose the plot like Myspace. Remember what killed Myspace: Facebook. Oh, and Myspace also played a big roll in killing Myspace. For example by hiring a bunch of loser posers to build out their infrastructure. Netapps for storage at $30/GB, sheesh. How long would Google last if they were that stupid? I mean, Google is stupid too in many ways, but not that stupid. I could go on, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I definitely think Farhad Manjoo is wrong. If Facebook were to make a phone, I'm sure they wouldn't make it ad-heavy. In fact, I think the phone itself would (or should) be close to ad-free and very inexpensive to make it very compelling to use. After all, the more targeted and precise the data the more valuable it becomes. One they put a phone in you're hand, they could get info like: - Who you really are (confirmed ID). - Some of your habits (e.g., where you tend to eat). - The people you tend to socialize with on a regular basis. - The people you (probably) live with.. - If the phone will support a "wallet", your spending habits and probably/baseline income. - If the agreement includes mining all communication (voice, at least, would probably be illegal), somebody is about to get married, go on vacation, thinking about lunch, etc. i.e., when they're primed for some solicitations I *think* this is what they're shooting for. But I think Facebook will run into a couple of hurdles when they have to deal with: 1. Wireless service providers. Unless Facebook and Google collaborate and create network of their own (do they have the cash?), or unless they throw the service providers a bone. 2. Regional privacy laws (both Federal and state, for the U.S.). Disclaimer: I also think Google flipped to creepy & evil a while ago; and also think they're priming to mine some (or all) of this information via Android.
Cool. We don't live in the 80s anymore.