Facebook Messaging: scorned by nerds, built for teens like candy-covered crack

http://brokenbottleboy.tumblr.com/post/1583250140/facebook-messaging-scorned-by-nerds-built-for

121 81 16 years ago

brokenbottleboy.tumblr.com

This raises the larger question about how much influence hackers and developers really have in terms of product adoption. There seem to be two schools of thought:

(1) Hackers/nerds are early adopters. Thus, they will influence "normal" people to use products that they judge to be superior.

(2) Hackers/nerds are a tiny proportion of the population with no real influence. They might push esoteric but superior technologies, but large-scale adoption will ultimately be driven by how quickly cat pictures can be shared with the largest group of people.

The author of the article clearly believes in (2), but Apple seems to be making money off (1). So which is it? Or is this some sort of false dichotomy to begin with?

nchlswu• 16 years ago

I don't think Apple is making a gross majority off of (1), it just happens that Apple's products can appeal to an even larger majority since they do appeal to "hackers/nerds"

I'm constantly amazed when the "hacker" types lack the ability to see the bigger picture wrt (2) you described. At least on internet comments, so many lead a very self centered viewpoint. By sheer numbers, it's clear that "hacker" types don't provide the influence that directly leads to the critical large-scale adoption that is desired by so many.

I don't think it's necessary to choose between (1) and (2) at all. "Hacker"-types and early adopters are necessary for any product to gain any traction. They hold early influence (which obviously varies depending on the product) which diminishes as the product gains a higher adoption rate.

mayanklahiri2• 16 years ago

> "Hacker"-types and early adopters are necessary for any product to gain any traction. They hold early influence (which obviously varies depending on the product) which diminishes as the product gains a higher adoption rate.

I guess then my question is whether "hackers" as an early-adopter group are worthwhile for targeting. Anyone have any anecdotes where a mainstream product started as a hacker niche?

ugh2• 16 years ago

Facebook is used by several hundred million people. It looks as though their old messaging systems will just be replaced and extended by the new one. I don’t think they need to worry all that much about early adopters. If the average Facebook user likes the new messaging system it will be used. What nerds do doesn’t matter.

kyro• 16 years ago

It is almost always option 2. Unless it is a company offering cool new tech and/or directly targeted at hackers, I don't think I can think of even one large company that owes its success largely due to hacker/nerds as early adopters. Hackers tend to be extremely practical individuals, and in their pursuit to practical perfection, they often forget to realize that there are people out there who value practicality lower than many other factors (eg. aesthetics, social validation). I bet most hackers won't care much for Facebook's new release ("they just reinvented email folders -- really?"), but I'm sure the majority of Facebook's power-users will love it. Similarly, many hackers don't get the appeal of Apple's products as they believe they're sacrificing function for form, but Apple seems to be doing alright. Lots of opportunities arise when you realize that the majority of consumers out there are actually looking to gain a lot more than just practicality, even if that may come at a practical cost. Women don't wear high heels and emo teens don't wear overly tight jeans because they feel comfortable.

joe_the_user3• 16 years ago

Oddly enough, a lot of Apple Fan boys are hackers but make the (2)-style arguments "you might not like this device but it's great for my mom who knows nothing about computers"

ary2• 16 years ago

By and large most of those devices don't require you to hand over tons of personal (and potentially sensitive) information just to use them.

Edit: My point being that advocating on behalf of mom and dad when it comes to technology shouldn't be frowned upon if it really does make their lives easier and better.

mike-cardwell• 16 years ago

He used the usual lazy arguments and spoke of Facebook users as if they're a type.

"Facebook Messaging was built for Facebook fans. It wasn’t made for folk who are bothered about ‘privacy issues’ or the idea of oversharing"

How many hundred million users does Facebook have? It has them from all walks of life, with all sorts of opinions. Nerds and non-nerds.

From what I've seen, most people don't like Facebook. They use it because it's convenient and because other people do. They stay logged in because of the addictive nature of the status updates, so are more likely to respond quickly to messages, unlike with email.

A lot of people might use this new messaging system. It will be a bad thing if they do. Facebook has already proven numerous times that they can't be considered trusted custodians of peoples private data.

I also wouldn't like it if all my phone calls were routed through Facebook.

timwiseman2• 16 years ago

You are neglecting the fact that many hackers/nerds are highly concerned with how quickly they can share cat pictures.

ohyes2• 16 years ago

"Or is this some sort of false dichotomy to begin with?"

Yes.

When you are starting out, you need that first critical mass of people to get your service going. Those are the nerds looking for the next 'cool' thing.

Once you have a service going, you can ditch the nerds, they are a small segment of the population. Instead pander to the lowest common denominator. I don't see how Apple is making money off (1).

I'm a nerd and I haven't owned an Apple product recently (disclosure: I had a B&W G3 in the late 90s; it was sick, I mean, firewire and usb, man).

The iPod was not the first mp3 player. (In fact, it had worse specs and a higher price than its contemporaries back in the day...)

And with their computers, I mean, realistically, they are making money off of overpriced hardware running warmed-over BSD. Sure, its got a fancy skin, but the in terms of the substantive stuff, it is BSD.

Where they really make money is incredibly amazingly great marketing and an increasingly loyal user population. You could say that the loyal group of users is due to 'superior' something or other (tech ux, etc.).

This might be true, but i can't imagine them actually winning market capital with those. Where they really win are with the commercials that I can't friggin' get out of my head.

So sure, false dichotomy, and no one ever made money off of (1), (1) is kind of the price you pay to jumpstart your market.

jacobolus2• 16 years ago

> but the in terms of the substantive stuff, it is BSD. Where they really make money is incredibly amazingly great marketing

This is just insulting flamebait.

pyre3• 16 years ago

  > overpriced hardware running warmed-over BSD. Sure,
  > its got a fancy skin, but the in terms of the substantive
  > stuff, it is BSD.

If you want to get technical, it's based off of NeXT and NeXT is based off of BSD.

mst• 16 years ago

From the point of view of the majority of their users it's high end (but not these days overpriced) hardware that happens to have a reliable underpinning to a fantastic UI.

Sure, it's got some BSD underneath, but in terms of the substantive stuff, it's the fantastic UI the users care about.

Of course as an fvwm2 user for half a decare plus, I hate Aqua, but at least I'm aware there's a point there to be missed.

Brokenbottleboy3• 16 years ago

I'm the author of the piece and I believe in both. 1 works initially but then 2 takes over in time. Apple isn't about "hackers", it's about people who want ease of use and style. Linux boxes and the like are hacker territory with hardware they can mess with.

biznickman• 16 years ago

Best explanation that I've read yet. Concise and to the point.

jimmyjazz14• 16 years ago

and manages to include the phrase "raging woody".

Brokenbottleboy3• 16 years ago

I'm so pleased someone else thought that was funny.

swombat2• 16 years ago

Spot on. Consider that IM client which got a million users in a couple of weeks a short while ago... that's the market that FB Messaging has to be aiming at, surely. And with 500 million users to seed it with, they'll get to a million active users in about 10 minutes.

joe_the_user3• 16 years ago

But given their huge size, I actually don't think they necessarily benefit from generating a bunch of users of a new service.

The question is how this changes the Facebook and whether it will benefit Facebook.

frofro• 16 years ago

Existing users will be locked in even more to Facebook. New users will sign up as many of their friends start to rely on the new service.

tlack• 16 years ago

it will ultimately cause users to spend more time on site when they can send sms or email very easily through FB. for instance, i neglect to use FB chat a lot because i'm not sure if the user is really logged in - if it instantly became an email or SMS so i know it would reach the recipient, i would use it more

swombat2• 16 years ago

If it makes sense for Google to invest in Android "so that people will spend more time searching for stuff online" it sure as hell makes sense for Facebook to create a chat client so that people will spend more time using Facebook to chat.

phlux5• 16 years ago

I was writing about this last week here on HN; but decided to kill the comment as I felt maybe I was being too pessimistic/critical:

I stated that FB has the Toys R Us business model: People are always producing kids; the internet always has new generations coming online. They are building for the COMING generations -- not the current.

Another here on HN summed it up best: FB's new messaging platform is for those who think FB IS the internet.

Additionally, this is further reason why I would not want/use a FB payment system. I dont want to have to be logged into FB / have an account on FB in order to pay something.

We have all seen how maverick Zuck is with others' privacy...

Disclaimer: I have never, nor shall I ever, had a FB account. I refuse to participate. While I see the value it provides others - I have been perfectly happy to not have had an account - and even gone as far as asking friends and girlfriends not to post pics or any other info about me to the site.

earnubs• 16 years ago

Just curious, if you've never had a Facebook account how can you have an informed opinion on their product?

Personally, I can't stand Twitter, but I still have an account so I can poke about, see what's new (mostly because I have a professional interest in knowing what's going on in the world of UI development).

jat8502• 16 years ago

Using a product is not an absolute requirement for forming an informed opinion on it. There is enough literature and information out there that one can casually gather an insight into how Facebook works, what their policies are, and empirical observations about how it is used/experienced by others around oneself.

phlux5• 16 years ago

I am very familiar with the site.. I just choose not to have an account. 98% of the people I know have accounts, and interestingly there is a group of people I know that are of the same mind as myself; have never had an account - and wont have an account. Additionally - they are all techies.

So, I follow everything that FB does - I just wont create an account.

chunkyslink• 16 years ago

I'm in the same situation re not having an account.

I work in web development and have had to integrate those disgusting 'like' buttons and examine closely the API for other jobs. All this led me to decide that Facebook is not for me.

gojomo• 16 years ago

There was a comment that struck me as a little odd, and a lot revealing, in the official Facebook announcement by Joel Seligstein (http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=452288242130):

I'm intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From "hey nice to meet you" to "do you want to get coffee sometime" to "our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight." That's a really cool idea.

Cool, yes, but also a little spooky.

phlux5• 16 years ago

And my fear over such a future, as a father of a 6-year old, is based on the track record they have with users' privacy.

I don't want my child's privacy philosophy decided for her DEFACTO just because That's the way FB has always done it*

Her idea of privacy should be an informed discernment based on her world view, not simply "Well this is just how it is".

angusgr2• 16 years ago

Privacy aside, have you ever tried to look something up from a few months ago, let alone (hypothetically) 20 years ago?

This is one of my absolute dislikes with both Facebook and Twitter - you pile all your data in there, they keep it all and own it all, and make it a royal pain for you to get at it again - even just for simple things like "I wonder when I was in XYZ?" or "What was that link that Matt posted last year?".

yters4• 16 years ago

That is going to be a crazy new world. But, if nothing is private, I doubt privacy will matter all that much. Just look at stone age tribes. Not a lot of privacy there, and people don't really care.

Maybe privacy is just a construct of modernized society?

usaar333• 16 years ago

And not per se new. I imagine most people don't do it, but I (and I'm sure plenty of others here) have been logging all of my IMs, emails, etc. for at least the past 10 years. Truth be told, it isn't that useful.

YooLi• 16 years ago

I don't how great that will be. It's painful when I go back and read the emails I wrote in college, especially the ones to girls. It's the ultimate cure for hubris.

dc2k08• 16 years ago

>They are building for the COMING generations

I honestly believe that a period of stagnant growth awaits facebook in the not too distant future when a new generation will be reluctant to join as it will be that 'uncool website their parents use...to spy on them'.

CamperBob• 16 years ago

Unfortunately, the aversion to being spied-upon is also being bred out of the gene pool at a rapid pace.

yters4• 16 years ago

Nah, I think the socializing aspect will outweigh the lack of privacy.

phlux5• 16 years ago

>'uncool website their parents use...to spy on them'

Thank you for showing me how to prevent my kid from joining: "Here I want you to make a facebook account so I can keep track of everything you do online and make sure you dont make any weird friends. I also want to check all your wall posts to see what you and your friends are saying. Here is your password."

angrycoder2• 16 years ago

This is the internet. Facebook will be lucky if it survives past the current generation, much less generations. It was only a few years ago that myspace was all the rage. Its not my intent to bash Facebook, but things change so fast in ways not many can predict.

rryyan• 16 years ago

The internet is also relatively young. Is it not unreasonable that the pace of change might stabilize over time, and a few long-term players will emerge?

What I'm saying is -- I don't think the internet itself is old enough that there enough precedent to predict how long a vastly influential internet company like Facebook might last.

It's not unusual for companies to be many decades old -- why does it seem assumed that an internet company that is fairly new today won't be around in 30 years?

tedunangst• 16 years ago

It was only a few years ago that Google search was all the rage. :)

There was a lot of turnover in search before Google. There was a lot of turnover in social sites before Facebook. So Facebook sticking around would not be unprecedented. All the failed giants of the past eventually fail, except the last one.

On top of that, I think Facebook has innovated (ok, at least iterated) more frequently and intensely on their basic offering than nearly anybody. Compare with Google, where we went from search results with ads to search results plus 3 thumbnails with ads.

timdorr• 16 years ago

I beg to differ. MySpace had maybe 75 million users at peak. Facebook has 500 million active users right now and is growing. That's 25% of the total Internet population. And they have a smarter distribution strategy (those widgets are everywhere), making them harder to just disappear suddenly.

It's certainly within the realm of possibility, but it's not likely for a long while.

yters4• 16 years ago

Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. We know next to nothing about internal Google, whereas we have a fairly good idea of internal Facebook.

Groxx• 16 years ago

Reductio ad absurdum: you'd prefer to have Hitler over that kid-who-looks-like-they-might-be-a-bully down the street.

To both points: I respectfully disagree. We know very little about either, but FB has proven it cannot be trusted. Google has been pretty good so far, it's just a potential-looming-menace to Facebook's outright menace.

whimsy• 16 years ago

>I have never, nor shall I ever, had a FB account.

My favorite thing about this development is that now you don't have to. If you have a friend who only communicates through Facebook, or primarily through Facebook, now you get to use e-mail to talk to them, and they get to use Facebook to talk to you. Everyone's happy.

... Unless they harvest data from your messages that sit on the FB system in your friend's inbox, of course.

hrabago• 16 years ago

I was just talking to my wife yesterday about this concept of "not for nerds, but rather for teens" when I was describing an iPhone app I'm working on. The app as it is now works exactly the way I want it to work, then I realized that I may not be the demo I should be targeting.

At this point, my options are to redesign and reprogram the app to appeal more to teens, or release what I have now and go for people looking for utility, then after that work on a version for people looking for fun.

codexon• 16 years ago

I'm amazed this blog post devoid of content or insight is #1.

His 4 paragraph message boils down to: "It wasn't made for techies." The same message that has been said about the Ipad, Macbook Air, Kindle and countless others.

Brokenbottleboy3• 16 years ago

I know. I'm just awful aren't I?

rodericksilva• 16 years ago

Great point on this article. FB is starting to remind me of AOL. AOL users didn't care that you could run IE outside of AOL WWW or that you could use Thunderbird instead of AOL mail. Just make it simple and keep it simple. Good job.

apl• 16 years ago

Does that mean Facebook will vanish completely over the next 10 years and turn into a punchline? Simplicity comes in different forms; I suspect that FB is actually aiming for the wrong kind in this case.

Facebook Messaging: scorned by nerds, built for teens like candy-covered crack

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