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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Precisely what I was wondering. /. just dropped his name like he was a Brin, Page, Cerf or someone of that fame.
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.
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.