Push Pop Press acquired by Facebook

by tlrobinson • 15 years ago

102 37 15 years ago

ivanzhao• 15 years ago

Is it a pure talent acquisition? As Push Pop Press's core business (coffee table iPad books) is so distant from Facebook's. Maybe they want to do something Flipboard-ish?

tlrobinson2• 15 years ago

Sounds like mostly talent:

"Although Facebook isn't planning to start publishing digital books, the ideas and technology behind Push Pop Press will be integrated with Facebook, giving people even richer ways to share their stories. With millions of people publishing to Facebook each day, we think it's going to be a great home for Push Pop Press."

bradleyland• 15 years ago

It's kind of hard to deny the parallels between Flipboard and tech like what Push Pop Press has developed. I know a number of people for whom Flipboard is the preferred method of interacting with Facebook. I'd assume that Facebook has some means of knowing which applications are using their API the most. Maybe there's some underlying data here that we can't see, like maybe Flipboard makes up a lot of Facebook's mobile usage, and we know how important it is for Facebook to control the user interaction.

/rampant speculation

A-K• 15 years ago

I guess this must be a talent grab. I haven't seen a more fluid, well-oiled app than Our Choice. The real question is, if Facebook's supposed iPad app is already close to launch, what's with the timing behind this?

sahillavingia• 15 years ago

Sometimes acquisitions are announced a long time after the acquisition actually happens.

pumblechook• 15 years ago

Sad to see. This was the only promising execution of ebooks for the tablet age, and Facebook is where it goes to die? I know they probably got obscene amounts of cash, but it is still disheartening to see innovations swallowed up by decidedly non-innovative companies.

schrototo• 15 years ago

While I thought Our Choice was a pretty snazzy product, and I think it's a shame that they're discontinuing work on their publishing platform, they did have a somewhat conservative approach to ebooks. No selectable text, "interactivity" that was pretty much limited to embedded videos and charts, and so on. What made it special was the incredibly "fluid" interface, meaning there wasn't a single button or control, you navigated the book purely by touching what you wanted to move and it worked like magic.

But there's lots of other ways books can be done in a digital format. For one really excellent example look at Inkling [1]. Now that's revolutionizing a medium (in this case textbooks).

[1] http://www.inkling.com/

ilovecomputers• 15 years ago

Push Pop's first publication did have a novel interface, but it was fundamentally no different than what we are used to. It was a book with other forms of media embedded within it.

I can get behind Inkling being revolutionary because it seems to me (focusing on their Social Learning feature) that it is closer to Vannevar Bush's vision of the memex. It is like the memex[1] in that it is taking advantage of the interactivity and social capabilities of current tech to create an interface that better matches the way we learn. The way we learn indirectly from others via books (where information is frozen and up to you to learn from it) and the way we directly learn from each other (mainly communicating about a topic in a conversational manner).

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think

endergen• 15 years ago

Have you seen Inkling? They're doing amazing stuff in this space.

americandesi3332• 15 years ago

I wonder how Mike Matas would feel after a year of being at Facebook...

When I first read about them and heard his TED talk, I really believed in what he was saying, that they aspired to change the way the world reads. I believed in his revolution...

So, this is definitely a let down...

mkramlich• 15 years ago

It's easier to change the world after you get Bank.

lurch_mojoff• 15 years ago

Sure, it is. But Push Pop got a ton of publicity partly because of Al Gore and partly because of Mike's passionate Ted talk, so I presume they would have been able to get more than enough funding. And of course you can't change the world if someone does it before you.

Anyway, the folks at Push Pop Press, as well as Sofa and the rest of top tier design talent that Facebook have been eating up, are smart bunch and I'm sure they know what and why are they doing. Or it could be the allure of a metric buttload of money.

flyosity• 15 years ago

Facebook is up to something really big.

Awhile ago they brought on Brandon Walkin (http://www.brandonwalkin.com/blog/) who is, arguably, one of the most detailed-oriented user interface designers on the planet. He's also a very talented Cocoa developer and apps that he's worked on have won Apple Design Awards.

Next, they acquired Sofa, another Apple Design Award-winning design & software firm who have created some of the best-looking apps for OS X.

Now they nabbed Push Pop Press, founded by Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris, who were both instrumental to the launch of the iPhone on the software side.

Facebook is building an army of UI designers/developers who 1) used to work at Apple, or 2) have built apps Apple has deemed best-in-class.

I'd be really surprised if Facebook isn't working on something big to go up against Apple and Google. There were rumors of a Facebook phone, perhaps Facebook is building their own hardware and need a world-class design team to craft its OS? I can't see Facebook sticking all this amazing talent on a redesign of Photos or Chat, or updating icons in Facebook's iPhone app.

hv23• 15 years ago

+1, there's definitely an interesting pattern of Facebook acquiring top Apple-related design talent.

TechCrunch has a series of posts on "Project Spartan", a high-priority project within Facebook where they're rumored to be making a new massive mobile distribution platform based on HTML5 (http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/15/facebook-project-spartan/). Maybe related?

//end rampant speculation

koopajah• 15 years ago

And they also hired Geohot last month. Might really well add to the facebook phone idea!

fuckall• 15 years ago

Also the great Ben Barry (http://blog.designforfun.com/) of the design cult forum theroot42.org and other places now works at Facebook.

jkincaid• 15 years ago

I doubt Facebook would build a hardware device. Instead, I think they'll do a 'social OS' that uses Android for all the low-level stuff, but with the Google apps all replaced with apps that have deep Facebook integration (messages, contacts, photos, etc.).

Microsoft Bing apps (e.g. Maps) could round out the features that FB doesn't build themselves, and they could use Amazon's Appstore in lieu of Android Market.

But to your point, it's possible these designers are at work making this social OS beautiful. Android in the back, iOS in the front.

cullenking• 15 years ago

Facebook won't build their competing phone OS on top of android - Google controls android and Google is facebook's biggest competitor.

fraserharris• 15 years ago

More likely built on WP7 than Android. Microsoft + Facebook are all ready in bed with Skype

null_para2• 15 years ago

Wow..thats awesome! May be building next-gen HTML5 stuff (based on TC reports abt HTML5)

tlrobinson2• 15 years ago

Push Pop also won an ADA... I think you're on to something.

rfurmani• 15 years ago

No no no, there's no way a Facebook phone would take off (especially in the already crowded market). Facebook's environment is built around iterating quickly, with okay solutions, and checking for bugs by pushing it out. It's a great hacking spirit and probably fun to work with, but is really ill suited to hardware and consumer products (look at how long it even took Google to get used to having discrete releases)

Steko2• 15 years ago

A Facebook phone is really just any gingerbread phone the hardware maker is currently making minus Google apps plus Facebook apps.

Obviously Facebook is making a huge effort to change their design DNA.

varenc• 15 years ago

They also recently hired George Hotz (geohot), a well known iphone unlocker...

wallflower• 15 years ago

My first thought upon hearing that it was Push Pop Press was education. Because of their work with Al Gore. Maybe even the predecessor to the TYLIP. Perhaps it could even be field-tested at the beneficiary school district(s) of the $100M pledge.

In Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age", a plot device (not central), is The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. It is an adaptive AI tutor. To realize TYLIP, hard AI problems will need to be solved. Yet, it is possible the iPad is a big step towards a simpler Primer.

"TYLIP is...a book that is powered by a computer so advanced it’s almost magical, and it teaches children everything. It does this through a fully interactive story. It teaches you how to read, how to do maths, it teaches you morals, ethics, even self-defence. ‘Diamond Age’ is a very entertaining read, mainly because of the TYLIP."

http://mssv.net/2006/05/01/the-young-ladys-illustrated-prime...

ltamake• 15 years ago

The horrible beast swallows up another good idea. :(

raganwald2• 15 years ago

At least they aren’t gobbling up a generation of talented youth and putting them to work plastering optimized and personalized little text ads on everything ;-)

statictype• 15 years ago

Well, those text ads do let us get, for free, a good mail service and an oracle that knows all and tells all.

aculver• 15 years ago

Mike Matas is awesome. I've been a fan of his work since Delicious Monster and I hope (if the past endeavors haven't already) that this transaction sets him up nicely. His photography and videography of his world travels at http://mikematas.com/ is amazing and I'd love to see more.

null_para2• 15 years ago

On a side topic, how facebook decides to acquire companies? Any idea?

startupcto2• 15 years ago

Congrats on flipping your startup. It's pretty much what everyone is doing nowadays. Change the world... whatever.

startupcto2• 15 years ago

really.. why the downvote ? can't a man be blunt on HN anymore, i have to make sure i don't hurt anyone feelings isn't this a "dipshite company" in Mike Arrington's dictionary.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/15/venture-capital-super-angel...

flocial• 15 years ago

Wow, that's just a straight up talent acquisition maybe with some patents thrown in for the impending legal meltdown. Remember the first acquisition Parakey? It was going to be a web OS of some sort so even Grandma can easily share pictures or something. Instead we got a perennially buggy Facebook iPhone app. It just goes to show how hard it is for growing companies to find good talent in the valley.

These are really brilliant people though. Must be amazing to have all those people in one building. Still, have no idea how Facebook can really bring out the best of that talent, Apple seems like a lot better place except for their old school secrecy. I guess it's hard to shine when you have two super novas like Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parakey

hboon• 15 years ago

We also got Three20. Not the best framework in the world, but it probably did more to enable iOS apps than any other non-Apple framework.

Push Pop Press acquired by Facebook

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