"Facebook split Messenger off into its own app to save you one extra click on the Messages tab."
Uhm, what? What they did was forcing their users to open up a separate app to do something with was working great already within the app, without having to open up a separate app. But now every time you want to do messaging, you have to wait the extra two seconds for "Messenger" to open up.
What a terrible example by the TechCrunch author. Maybe he was ironic?
If you took a moment to think of use cases other than your own, you would realize that there's a lot of us that ONLY use facebook messenger. I haven't checked my newsfeed in ages.
Good for you, and all other Messenger-only-users. But why force all other users who are using the Facebook-app to open up a separate app when they want to send or read messages?
They expected to add a TON of complexity to the messenger product (they announced messenger as a platform at F8) and they needed a way to decouple the already complex main FB app. It buys them a bunch of things, like easier maintenance, extensibility, and ability to push updates independently among other user experience benefits.
They also didn't want to split the user experience of using Facebook messenger on mobile and hence the forced switch.
It was only a big deal because of the surface area of the world that the main Facebook product (w/ messenger) covers. I guarantee you that if Google did something like that no one would care (at least not enough to give 20,000+ 1 star reviews)
Yeah I'm one of the messenger-only people, and (obviously) I'm really happy I can use the messenger-only app, but, wow, the way they handled the integration w/ the main FB app is ungodly inelegant, almost to the level of being insulting to the user, IMO.
They had a good blog post about this, which gave a good explanation. Basically it said that some huge percentage of FB app use was messsanger, so why not optimise for that use case instead?
Imagine a venn diagram, where the left circle is "FB users" and the right is "Messanger users". I think it's a quite big overlap. Are you seriously suggesting it was a right decision to degrade the service for the users using both services?
That's not optimizing, it's just plain stupid.
Nothing would have prevented them from both a) letting people do simple messaging inside the FB app, while at the same time b) providing a kick ass advanced separate Messanger app for the users only interested in messaging.
I thought it was a technical reason, like there was only so much you could do with an ios app so they needed to turn it into two. I don't develop ios so it wasn't clear to me exactly what the issue was.
Because of this change it now takes 1-14 days for my to respond to a facebook message. I see no need to install a separate app when I'm already debating uninstalling facebook's app. And usually I'm not motivated to log into facebooks' website just to read and respond to the message. So they sit there until I finally get bored enough to do it. Granted, in all fairness, I probably get under 4 messages a month.
While the TechCrunch article is a little off stating it's to save you an extra click Facebook has come out and said splitting it optimized the user experience for the majority of the messenger users. So while their statement is a little off the sentiment is accurate.
Honest question: has Facebook done anything to indicate that they are willing and able to protect user data? Because social and financial are two words that I don't like seeing near each other. I ask because I deleted my account years ago because I felt I had too little control over what was shared and with who, concerning when the service is from a company with no financial incentive to keep any data private. I have no idea if those behaviors have changed and no real interest in looking into it myself.
I very rarely post to Facebook but I do feel that I know who my data is shared with when I do. They seem to have stopped their ridiculous habit of resetting all my privacy settings to public now as well.
Like Google I imagine they do actually try to protect the data they have beyond what I explicitly share at least to the extent it's not sold (I'm assuming they use the same model as Google and sell ads from the data instead of just selling the data, but their ads are so badly targeted it's hard to tell).
That said I don't see myself giving them financial details because I don't really know what they do with data that's not explicitly shared by users (which like I said has become a lot clearer) and I don't really particularly trust them. Plus I'd be amazed if they ever managed to show an ad I was remotely interested in.
Do retailers really want Facebook owning the entire marketing sales funnel, including the customer relationship? This article makes it sound like this is a new feature for businesses, but it sure doesn't look like they have the best interests of businesses at heart.
It's not friction if you have to smile and say hello to the guy at the apple cart before you buy your apples.
> What if buying something was as easy as Liking it? You’d probably buy a lot more, and buy it through whoever made it so damn simple.
Exactly. There is Paypal. Afaik, Amazon and Google discontinued their similar service that was in competition with Paypal (API for third party website payments) - but why? (I think that were the services: Amazon WebPay, Google Checkout)
Google Checkout shutdown because it had reputational issues among merchants, and culture clash issues with the rest of Google. Payment platforms require human support personnel, and this is something that Google is diametrically opposed to. They algorithmically suspended many merchant accounts early in the service's life, with no explanation as to why and no one to talk to about it. This happened to me; I wound up filing a BBB complaint and they responded saying the reasons that they effectively stole thousands of dollars from me after months of operations without a single chargeback were "proprietary and confidential". I was not alone; the Google Checkout support forums were filled with stories like mine.
This is why no one should ever use Google for any critical function that may require support (cloud servers etc.). Google just doesn't do the whole "human" thing very well. If it goes terribly wrong and they refuse to talk to you, good luck suing them unless you are a Fortune 500 company.
Im not in the US, so I wonder: If big company like Google owes you money - isn't there some institution that will help you get it? Maybe the BBB?
Especially if Google wrongfully kept the money from many customers. I would think some government run institutions would get going. Something like the "public prosecutor's office" or so.
If Google were doing this at a large scale, the US Government or state government/s would usually be willing to sue them over it.
At a medium scale (in # of cases), you might find a law firm willing to take on a lot of cases, in exchange for a big cut. You can also choose to pursue your own situation individually.
At a small scale (just your case let's say, and a small'ish sum of money), you're going to mostly be limited to small claim's court, which can work perfectly well sometimes:
The correct answer to that is: it depends, aka not necessarily.
Most likely what Google is doing, is dancing in the gray area. For example, is it criminal when PayPal hits you with a chargeback because a customer lies about x y or z? Given their size there's no question they do that a lot. Google would argue their business choices, like shutting down someone's wallet account (with money in it), falls into a similar category of business discretion - rather than being criminal.
This is why almost all of what the SEC does is civil enforcement, fines, etc. In business there are almost always cases of financial loss due to ignorance, incompetence, discretion, risk taking and so on - most of that is not properly going to be criminal, but rather civil.
Were Google doing something inappropriate in an area involving business discretion, the government may decide it's not ok, but not criminal (eg lacking the intention to defraud). In that case, they'll typically try to put a stop to the behavior, and use fines to do so. At times it can be incredibly difficult to show a company is intending to defraud its customers, the Feds would need a hard trail of evidence (emails, communication, etc. showing Google was trying to defraud customers).
Unfortunately, as Google likes to say, the operate at "Google scale". My guess based on the sheer number of complaints in the forums, there were at least 1,000 merchants that this happened to. However, that was a tiny percentage of the merchant base. So, no one cared. As far as the BBB, they are useless. They consider any response at all from the business as meaning that the business has resolved the complaint. Once they told the BBB that my money was stolen due to "proprietary and confidential" reasons, they marked it as resolved and it actually benefited their BBB rating.
It should be clarified for the general readership that the BBB is a private enterprise; basically, the pre-internet Yelp. Since they call themselves a "bureau", many people think they're a governmental agency, but they're not.
BBB doesn't benefit by alienating businesses or making it "difficult" to resolve complaints, and they have no obligation to actually help the consumer. There are a lot of shady companies with really good BBB ratings.
BBB is on its way out I think, superseded by crowdsourced review sites. People don't check BBB ratings very often anymore.
> If big company like Google owes you money - isn't there some institution that will help you get it?
That's what the civil justice system is for.
> Especially if Google wrongfully kept the money from many customers. I would think some government run institutions would get going.
There's some government institutions (other than the courts themselves) that might have authority to initiate action in certain cases, but in general "not paying out funds the way I think is required based on the contract I have with you" is the kind of thing handled through private actions in the civil justice system.
> Something like the "public prosecutor's office" or so.
While its possible that anything wrong Google might have done might rise to the level of a criminal, rather than civil, wrong, none of the descriptions I've seen point to anything that (even if the descriptions are presumed to be completely correct) seems obviously criminal.
A very big Walled Garden. As an owner of an ecommerce site, I can tell you it's very tempting to create an App version just to take advantage of one-tap thumbprint orders.
Also I don't think Amazon or Google have a TouchID payment system.
Facebook has a huge opportunity here to build the mobile payment killer app. If they can get this integrated with NFC, you can pay for the tab at a restaurant and split the check among you and your friends. Realistically, you could use it to split nearly ANY bill - Facebook just has to build an interface.
The only question is if the payment processors and Apple/Google will leave the door open wide enough.
This won't be like WebPay or Checkout. Considering all the businesses and Family/Friends already in FB, this can be put into very good use.
But I was kind of waiting for Youtube competant from Facebook for sometime now. I think Facebook is one of the major sources for Youtube and FB has ability to do something about it.
YouTube belongs to Google. I too wonder why Google hasn't focused more of their attention on YT. It's their social network hub that works fine for about one billion people.
Do the G+ comments below YT videos make sense? No (from the users point of view) . There used to be insightful replies to YT comments including video-replies. All that has vanished, only spam remains. Beside that, anyone remember their older social hubs Google Buzz and Orkut?
I don't think the author of this article has ever used Facebook or actually read the details on the thing he's writing about. Facebook having a payment method doesn't solve a single problem with either Facebook or payment methods in general.
Uhm, what? What they did was forcing their users to open up a separate app to do something with was working great already within the app, without having to open up a separate app. But now every time you want to do messaging, you have to wait the extra two seconds for "Messenger" to open up. What a terrible example by the TechCrunch author. Maybe he was ironic?