ParisLemon

Josh Constine for TechCrunch:

It’s called “Rage Shake” and the name is spot-on. Employees just violently shake their phone and it automatically logs its current state and sends in details to Facebook’s mobile bug-squashers. By avoiding a more complicated manual reporting process, Facebook maximizes the number of bugs it hears about from its 4,000 employee-testers. If Facebookers like the taste of Droidfood, they could make sure it’s not their actual users shaking their phones in fits of anger.

Clever idea.

But to the larger point: why is it that Facebook has to hang these flyers throughout the campus to get employees to test Android builds? Josh sort of leads it in the way that Facebook itself pushed iPhones ahead of Android phones early on, but I’m not sure I’m buying that. I know a lot of folks who work at a lot of different companies in the Bay Area. Aside from the ones that work at Google (and including a surprising number of the people there) almost all seem to use iPhones as their primary device.

This strikes me as problematic for Android. Winning on the cost front is one factor, no doubt. But to win the most savvy users — including, most importantly, developers — you need to be the best overall. Android still has yet to prove it can yield that device. That’s why you still see such problems at Facebook and elsewhere. Most of their users may be on Android, but most of their employees making the product are not.