20 ms·

I really don't see the point of separate apps. The main Facebook app, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Photos...what's next? Anyone who can enlighten me why this w

by JCB_K 14y ago

I really don't see the point of separate apps. The main Facebook app, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Photos...what's next? Anyone who can enlighten me why this would be a good strategy? Seems like unnecessary fragmentation to me.

jdcryans 14y ago
My experience with their app is that it's just so slow that being able to jump directly to Messenger when I need to use it saves me some time. I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing.
- JCB_K 14y ago
  Making a separate app is not a solution. Speeding up your main app is.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    Not easy to do on iOS when your main app relies on hooks to a web browser. iOS forces apps to use an older Javascript engine.
simondlr 14y ago
When taking photos, Facebook wants it to be the first thing users think of. By stripping other separate features, users won't be that easily confused about the purpose of the app. I'd venture and say few users immediately go to the current Facebook to upload a photo, but if there is a separate app, then the other features won't distract them from what they want to achieve. Basically: "Want to share a moment? Think Facebook. NOT twitter. NOT instagram." That's my guess.
timjahn 14y ago
For photos specifically, it takes me an average of 10 minutes to upload a photo on their iPhone app if I'm on my cell connection. The 10 minutes consists of a combination of upload attempts, fails, freezes, etc. It's just a horrible experience. If this new standalone photo app will let me easily, quickly, flawlessly upload photos to Facebook, then hell yeah.
- pinko 14y ago
  This doesn't make any sense to me. Why not just fix the main app?
  - timjahn 14y ago
    I completely agree. Facebook's iPhone app experience is overall horrible in my experience. It just simply rarely works. I think they should fix it. But if their current solution is to make the photo taking/sharing a separate app, that's fine with me. I use Facebook mobile more to take/share photos than anything else on Facebook.
  - nc 14y ago
    They started off with that approach, the app had a pseudo home screen with quick access to different functions. Ultimately I think it boils down to what you think of when you want to do take a photo or send a message which maps to (Facebook Camera, Facebook Messenger) more naturally than just Facebook.
  - scorpion032 14y ago
    The main app is optimized for reading your timeline. Fetches notifications, friends, messages etc. It is hard to optimize for different tasks at once, while I'd also argue it would be possible to strike a good balance. But I think it is a pragmatic decision rather than try to achieve that perfect balance, and let several instagrams take over, do the right thing for each task and a year down the line knowing usage patterns, with much better hardware, you can think about a consolidated app.
wattjustin 14y ago
I agree, at this point, my iPhone needs a new folder created specifically created for Facebook produced apps. I already have too many camera apps installed, many of which upload to Facebook. I understand Facebook trying to keep users in their ecosystem, but separate apps for each part of their service seems a bit much to me as well and I don't see how it's a good long term strategy if they continue this cycle. We'll know they don't really have a strategy if they release an app solely for rejecting requests to play Words with Friends and Draw Something with others.
54mf 14y ago
They want to own the mobile ecosystem. After they release enough Facebook _____ apps, they can (a) lean on the OS makers to give them preferential treatment, ala Twitter in iOS, and/or (b) release a Facebook phone with "all the apps you already know and love".
salman89 14y ago
Facebook always had photo sharing features built into their apps, but was still dominated by Instagram. Lesson here is that mobile apps are very task oriented - people have apps to check their email, get directions, etc. Having function specific apps for Facebook makes sense here.
mycodebreaks 14y ago
Next is Facebook Ads.
dominostars 14y ago
It's the iOS paradigm to make feature simple standalone apps. Why do you think Apple has both a "Photo Album" and "Camera" app? And both a "Phone" and "Contacts" app? Many users upload photos to Facebook, so there's a huge incentive to make an app that makes it simple to do this. Even if the main Facebook app has feature parity with FBPhotos, it's still going to come with all of the cruft.
- freehunter 14y ago
  It's somewhat in following with the Unix paradigm; do one thing, do it well.
  - tferris 14y ago
    Not always. Regarding core Unix commands yes (like 'ls', 'cat') but look for example at 'git' which is a real beast.
    - austintaylor 14y ago
      git is just a facade for the git-* commands.
    - Smudge 14y ago
      Not to veer too far from the main discussion, but 'git' isn't just some giant monolithic binary. The 'git' command is a wrapper around a bunch of different, relatively modular binaries. They each even have their own man page. (e.g. 'git push' maps to 'git-push'). Each is just a unique action that can be applied to a common data structure (the git repository).
      - tferris 14y ago
        I know. And still all these different libs are accessible by one UI/route ('git').
        krakensden 14y ago
newhouseb 14y ago
When you try to design a mobile app you quickly realize how little real-estate you have on a phone to build a complex interface. Facebook is a ridiculously complex app when you think about all of the things you can do. Facebook might be working under the assumption that they can make cleaner, simpler products by breaking them out into smaller functional units all backed by the same social graph. Or this could be a relic of something the Sofa team was working on before the Instagram deal.
- zecho 14y ago
  > Or this could be a relic of something the Sofa team was working on before the Instagram deal. Probably. And the Instagram deal is still under review from the FTC for quite some time, so it'll be awhile before we see any major integrations, I think.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
In part, for the same reason (in part) that Instagram blew up. iOS doesn't have Android's intent feature.
- Drbble 14y ago
  Billion dollars for cloning one instance of a feature of android. So much for the "apps sell, not features" theory
cdcarter 14y ago
I like it. There's less wading through non-native in-app menus. I want to read my timeline or generally waste time? Facebook. I want to send a quick message to someone I don't text? Facebook Messenger. I want to share a new photo or three from my friend's commencement? Facebook Photos. One tap and I'm there, and ready to do what I want to do. Maybe two, if I have the app in a folder.
tsurantino 14y ago
Can the point of separate apps be justified in reinforcing that Facebook is more of a platform than just a website? They also have Pages & Messenger. I like the idea of isolating these aspects because it gives more utility to these individual functions rather than obscuring them by combining all of the site's functionality into one, slow and poor performing app. Overall, the app looks good but I'm not sure what's the deal with Instagram now.
adrianhoward 14y ago
Anyone who can enlighten me why this would be a good strategy? Seems like unnecessary fragmentation to me. Because they optimise a particular use case, which makes it more likely people will do something, which will make it more likely that facebook can use the shared content to drive more people towards facebook. Take photo sharing. Photos are often spontaneous. So the more responsive, quick and simple it is to take a photo and share it the more likely it is to happen. Ideally I want to hit the photo app and by the time I've moved the camera up to my face be ready to take a photo. Facebook's new app is much closer to that experience than their current generic app. I bet that it will get more photos on Facebook. More photos == more traffic == more dollars. You can't fix the current generic Facebook app to work as a better photo taking app - since if you made it the ideal photo taking application, it would be sub-optimal at the other things that facebook want the mobile app to do.
MasterScrat 14y ago
Less click. Instead of Facebook -> Camera -> whatever you directly access the feature you want.
smokinjoe 14y ago
Because it ropes in people like me who don't want the native Facebook app on their phone, but want to keep in touch with friends who use Facebook messages.
habitatforus 14y ago
Because Facebook wants to be the platform and not the app. At some point we'll realize that Zuckerburg was out to replace Windows not Myspace
- sparknlaunch12 14y ago
  Agree with this statement. To compete with Microsoft, Apple, Google you need a platform (OS and phone). While Facebook messenger didn't really off, photos may be more of a popular transition as many send photos to Facebook anyway.
muhfuhkuh 14y ago
Icon space. Assuming most people don't put their related apps in folders, they instead have it all on display. Like shelf space at the grocery store. The more product users can see with your brand, the more they'll 1) Trust the brand 2) Use it I'm sure if they haven't integrated them yet, they will; and that in itself is a kind of lock-in you could only otherwise get if you owned the OS.
tar 14y ago
I think this might have something to do with the App Center they are launching soon. Making people install their own apps through the app center will make them more familiar with it.
ken 14y ago
If I were Facebook, I would be thrilled at the idea. I'd want as many apps as Facebook has features, as long as we could get users to install them. Right now "Facebook" is one app on iPhones and Androids, next to native apps like Camera and Photos. Imagine if Facebook was 10 or 15 apps, and they were the same across iOS and Android. For the Facebook-loving crowd, at least, they'd take up your entire home screen, and make the OS virtually irrelevant. For these people, it's more like anti-fragmentation (unification), on Facebook's platform. I see this as similar to Netscape (built for a dozen platforms), or Office (for Mac): they're saying "don't worry about the OS -- we'll take care of that for you -- you only need to know that if Our Product is on top, then you know how to use it".
zmitri 14y ago
A guess: Facebook phone with separate facebook apps all built on android.
- canthonytucci 14y ago
  That was my first thought as well until I saw that the app was only iOS first....doesn't mean it wont happen, but I'm still not ready to bet on it.
joedev 14y ago
The same reason that one goes to "Camera" on an iPhone to take photos and goes to "Messages" on an iPhone to send messages. They do different things and it's clear when you open the app what you want to do. And though you can take photos from within Messages and can SMS photos from within Camera, it keeps things simple to have a clear intention for each app.
eric-hu 14y ago
I had the Facebook app for Android before they split it into 3. The version just before the split was unstable for uploading photos. It was consistently crashing whenever I tried to upload a photo. I'm not sure what was the source of the crash, but I can see how breaking up the Facebook application into smaller pieces would make it easier for devs to maintain well.
baby 14y ago
I actually asked myself this question several times until I recently found an answer. They want to compete with what's app and bbm. Facebook messenger is the SMS application of people who have internet on their phone. It's actually brilliant when you think about it!
taude 14y ago
I think it makes sense to have two apps for FB. One's for content creation, and optimized for that. The other's for when you're bored and killing time scanning through the stream. When I'm sitting somewhere and I see something I want to share, it makes sense to just use the app that's optimized for posting a photo

by JCB_K 14y ago

jdcryans 14y ago

My experience with their app is that it's just so slow that being able to jump directly to Messenger when I need to use it saves me some time. I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing.

JCB_K 14y ago
Making a separate app is not a solution. Speeding up your main app is.
- freehunter 14y ago
  Not easy to do on iOS when your main app relies on hooks to a web browser. iOS forces apps to use an older Javascript engine.

simondlr 14y ago

When taking photos, Facebook wants it to be the first thing users think of. By stripping other separate features, users won't be that easily confused about the purpose of the app. I'd venture and say few users immediately go to the current Facebook to upload a photo, but if there is a separate app, then the other features won't distract them from what they want to achieve. Basically: "Want to share a moment? Think Facebook. NOT twitter. NOT instagram." That's my guess.

timjahn 14y ago

For photos specifically, it takes me an average of 10 minutes to upload a photo on their iPhone app if I'm on my cell connection. The 10 minutes consists of a combination of upload attempts, fails, freezes, etc. It's just a horrible experience. If this new standalone photo app will let me easily, quickly, flawlessly upload photos to Facebook, then hell yeah.

pinko 14y ago
This doesn't make any sense to me. Why not just fix the main app?
- timjahn 14y ago
  I completely agree. Facebook's iPhone app experience is overall horrible in my experience. It just simply rarely works. I think they should fix it. But if their current solution is to make the photo taking/sharing a separate app, that's fine with me. I use Facebook mobile more to take/share photos than anything else on Facebook.
- nc 14y ago
  They started off with that approach, the app had a pseudo home screen with quick access to different functions. Ultimately I think it boils down to what you think of when you want to do take a photo or send a message which maps to (Facebook Camera, Facebook Messenger) more naturally than just Facebook.
- scorpion032 14y ago
  The main app is optimized for reading your timeline. Fetches notifications, friends, messages etc. It is hard to optimize for different tasks at once, while I'd also argue it would be possible to strike a good balance. But I think it is a pragmatic decision rather than try to achieve that perfect balance, and let several instagrams take over, do the right thing for each task and a year down the line knowing usage patterns, with much better hardware, you can think about a consolidated app.

wattjustin 14y ago

I agree, at this point, my iPhone needs a new folder created specifically created for Facebook produced apps. I already have too many camera apps installed, many of which upload to Facebook. I understand Facebook trying to keep users in their ecosystem, but separate apps for each part of their service seems a bit much to me as well and I don't see how it's a good long term strategy if they continue this cycle. We'll know they don't really have a strategy if they release an app solely for rejecting requests to play Words with Friends and Draw Something with others.

54mf 14y ago

They want to own the mobile ecosystem. After they release enough Facebook _____ apps, they can (a) lean on the OS makers to give them preferential treatment, ala Twitter in iOS, and/or (b) release a Facebook phone with "all the apps you already know and love".

salman89 14y ago

Facebook always had photo sharing features built into their apps, but was still dominated by Instagram. Lesson here is that mobile apps are very task oriented - people have apps to check their email, get directions, etc. Having function specific apps for Facebook makes sense here.

mycodebreaks 14y ago

Next is Facebook Ads.

dominostars 14y ago

It's the iOS paradigm to make feature simple standalone apps. Why do you think Apple has both a "Photo Album" and "Camera" app? And both a "Phone" and "Contacts" app? Many users upload photos to Facebook, so there's a huge incentive to make an app that makes it simple to do this. Even if the main Facebook app has feature parity with FBPhotos, it's still going to come with all of the cruft.

freehunter 14y ago
It's somewhat in following with the Unix paradigm; do one thing, do it well.
- tferris 14y ago
  Not always. Regarding core Unix commands yes (like 'ls', 'cat') but look for example at 'git' which is a real beast.
  - austintaylor 14y ago
    git is just a facade for the git-* commands.
  - Smudge 14y ago
    Not to veer too far from the main discussion, but 'git' isn't just some giant monolithic binary. The 'git' command is a wrapper around a bunch of different, relatively modular binaries. They each even have their own man page. (e.g. 'git push' maps to 'git-push'). Each is just a unique action that can be applied to a common data structure (the git repository).
    - tferris 14y ago
      I know. And still all these different libs are accessible by one UI/route ('git').
      - krakensden 14y ago

newhouseb 14y ago

When you try to design a mobile app you quickly realize how little real-estate you have on a phone to build a complex interface. Facebook is a ridiculously complex app when you think about all of the things you can do. Facebook might be working under the assumption that they can make cleaner, simpler products by breaking them out into smaller functional units all backed by the same social graph. Or this could be a relic of something the Sofa team was working on before the Instagram deal.

zecho 14y ago
> Or this could be a relic of something the Sofa team was working on before the Instagram deal. Probably. And the Instagram deal is still under review from the FTC for quite some time, so it'll be awhile before we see any major integrations, I think.

drivebyacct2 14y ago

In part, for the same reason (in part) that Instagram blew up. iOS doesn't have Android's intent feature.

Drbble 14y ago
Billion dollars for cloning one instance of a feature of android. So much for the "apps sell, not features" theory

cdcarter 14y ago

I like it. There's less wading through non-native in-app menus. I want to read my timeline or generally waste time? Facebook. I want to send a quick message to someone I don't text? Facebook Messenger. I want to share a new photo or three from my friend's commencement? Facebook Photos. One tap and I'm there, and ready to do what I want to do. Maybe two, if I have the app in a folder.

tsurantino 14y ago

Can the point of separate apps be justified in reinforcing that Facebook is more of a platform than just a website? They also have Pages & Messenger. I like the idea of isolating these aspects because it gives more utility to these individual functions rather than obscuring them by combining all of the site's functionality into one, slow and poor performing app. Overall, the app looks good but I'm not sure what's the deal with Instagram now.

adrianhoward 14y ago

Anyone who can enlighten me why this would be a good strategy? Seems like unnecessary fragmentation to me. Because they optimise a particular use case, which makes it more likely people will do something, which will make it more likely that facebook can use the shared content to drive more people towards facebook. Take photo sharing. Photos are often spontaneous. So the more responsive, quick and simple it is to take a photo and share it the more likely it is to happen. Ideally I want to hit the photo app and by the time I've moved the camera up to my face be ready to take a photo. Facebook's new app is much closer to that experience than their current generic app. I bet that it will get more photos on Facebook. More photos == more traffic == more dollars. You can't fix the current generic Facebook app to work as a better photo taking app - since if you made it the ideal photo taking application, it would be sub-optimal at the other things that facebook want the mobile app to do.

MasterScrat 14y ago

Less click. Instead of Facebook -> Camera -> whatever you directly access the feature you want.

smokinjoe 14y ago

Because it ropes in people like me who don't want the native Facebook app on their phone, but want to keep in touch with friends who use Facebook messages.

habitatforus 14y ago

Because Facebook wants to be the platform and not the app. At some point we'll realize that Zuckerburg was out to replace Windows not Myspace

sparknlaunch12 14y ago
Agree with this statement. To compete with Microsoft, Apple, Google you need a platform (OS and phone). While Facebook messenger didn't really off, photos may be more of a popular transition as many send photos to Facebook anyway.

muhfuhkuh 14y ago

Icon space. Assuming most people don't put their related apps in folders, they instead have it all on display. Like shelf space at the grocery store. The more product users can see with your brand, the more they'll 1) Trust the brand 2) Use it I'm sure if they haven't integrated them yet, they will; and that in itself is a kind of lock-in you could only otherwise get if you owned the OS.

tar 14y ago

I think this might have something to do with the App Center they are launching soon. Making people install their own apps through the app center will make them more familiar with it.

ken 14y ago

If I were Facebook, I would be thrilled at the idea. I'd want as many apps as Facebook has features, as long as we could get users to install them. Right now "Facebook" is one app on iPhones and Androids, next to native apps like Camera and Photos. Imagine if Facebook was 10 or 15 apps, and they were the same across iOS and Android. For the Facebook-loving crowd, at least, they'd take up your entire home screen, and make the OS virtually irrelevant. For these people, it's more like anti-fragmentation (unification), on Facebook's platform. I see this as similar to Netscape (built for a dozen platforms), or Office (for Mac): they're saying "don't worry about the OS -- we'll take care of that for you -- you only need to know that if Our Product is on top, then you know how to use it".

zmitri 14y ago

A guess: Facebook phone with separate facebook apps all built on android.

canthonytucci 14y ago
That was my first thought as well until I saw that the app was only iOS first....doesn't mean it wont happen, but I'm still not ready to bet on it.

joedev 14y ago

The same reason that one goes to "Camera" on an iPhone to take photos and goes to "Messages" on an iPhone to send messages. They do different things and it's clear when you open the app what you want to do. And though you can take photos from within Messages and can SMS photos from within Camera, it keeps things simple to have a clear intention for each app.

eric-hu 14y ago

I had the Facebook app for Android before they split it into 3. The version just before the split was unstable for uploading photos. It was consistently crashing whenever I tried to upload a photo. I'm not sure what was the source of the crash, but I can see how breaking up the Facebook application into smaller pieces would make it easier for devs to maintain well.

baby 14y ago

I actually asked myself this question several times until I recently found an answer. They want to compete with what's app and bbm. Facebook messenger is the SMS application of people who have internet on their phone. It's actually brilliant when you think about it!

taude 14y ago

I think it makes sense to have two apps for FB. One's for content creation, and optimized for that. The other's for when you're bored and killing time scanning through the stream. When I'm sitting somewhere and I see something I want to share, it makes sense to just use the app that's optimized for posting a photo