Speaking of the Poke app, TechCrunch’s Josh Constine answered the big (and most obvious) question:
So essentially, Facebook only stores your Pokes for two days so if anyone reports you for offending them, like by sending unwanted images of what’s in your pants, it can see if the accusations are true. Then it effectively deletes the Pokes, and by 90 days after there’s absolutely no way to recover the contents of a message. Facebook is trying to cut down that window, which could help it appear just as secure as Snapchat.
Good that Facebook isn’t trying to use this app to get more data into their system. Though I do wonder if they’re noting information one-step back — that is, who is poking whom and how often? That’s potentially valuable social graph information.
Brian X. Chen for The New York Times:
I get some messages from other friends that promptly disappear as well. Most of them say something along the lines of, “What is the point of this?” or “This is so weird.”
Sounds exactly like people talking about Twitter five years ago. And basically every eventual breakout tech product. If it was obvious, it would be obvious.
I still not sure about the long-term prospects of Snapchat/Poke, but that’s exactly why these things interest me. Discount natural user behavior at your own peril.
So when I said:
I also can’t help but wonder if maybe this is a message from Facebook: don’t want to come work with us? Fine, we’ll clone your service in a couple weeks and ship it to a billion users.
Yeah, my bad. It was 12 days.
shortformblog:
Facebook’s Snapchat competitor is called “Poke,” confirming what we already knew: The word “Poke” is innuendo for sexy time.
Fascinating just how close to Snapchat it actually is.
There’s no question that the UI/UX is better here, but I’m not sure how much that will actually matter with the teenage Snapchat demographic. Many teens seem to use apps that look and may even perform awful, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is the graph — that their friends are using it.
And you might think, “but everyone is on Facebook” — sure, but that also doesn’t matter if the use case is different. Maybe teens are using Snapchat specifically because it’s not Facebook.
Anyway, I’m not going to pretend to really understand Snapchat anyway. Compelling social, fun idea (the self-destructing message) — but high potential to be faddish. But I’m sure I’m missing something.
I’m more interested here in Facebook’s continued march to make stand-alone apps. This seems like it should be a part of the Messenger app, but it’s not. And the deep iOS integration makes this approach really shine (“Sign in as MG Siegler?”).
I also can’t help but wonder if maybe this is a message from Facebook: don’t want to come work with us? Fine, we’ll clone your service in a couple weeks and ship it to a billion users.
At the very least, Poke is a fun attempt to make use of an old part of Facebook in a way that actually makes some sense in the modern, mobile world.
Nilay Patel of The Verge (once again) brings up a few good points about the Instagram TOS fiasco. As he points out, the new TOS was actually worded much better than the old one. But the tech press blew it and caused a panic over basically nothing. The end result is the reversion to the old TOS, which technically allows for more of the kind of shady stuff everyone was freaked out about in the new one. Nice work, tech press.
And I think he’s right about the lesson for startups: don’t mess with something no one is complaining about — and lawyers: be as vague as possible in your documents. Both of those things suck.
But…
The notion that Instagram may use this reversion to try to do shady stuff still reads as foolish. Does anyone really think Instagram would try to get away with any such actions — especially now? Why? They clearly stated that wasn’t the intention. Sure, intentions do change. But the story is the same: if Instagram actually does shady things, people will stop using Instagram. No one benefits.
Look, at the end of the day all you have to think about is this: do you believe the services you’re using are out to exploit you? If so, don’t use them. Sure, a good TOS may be able to protect you from some of that, but hardly from all of it. If a company wants to fuck you, they’re going to figure out a way to fuck you. You shouldn’t be using a service that you think is trying to fuck you.
I don’t believe Instagram is that service. Nor do I believe Facebook is. But if you do, it’s simple: don’t use them.
More rational thinking from Mike Masnick on the Instagram TOS changes:
Furthermore, even if the terms are worded poorly (it’s mostly boilerplate, and you’ll find somewhat similar terms in lots of places) if Instagram really went out and started selling your photos to appear in, say, a big magazine or TV ad, there would be significant public backlash over that, such that it’s probably in their own best interest not to do that without direct permission.
Exactly. Does anyone believe Instagram or Facebook would be stupid enough to do this? Why? Because they’re “evil”? Only an extremely paranoid or insane person would believe that. To make money? Sure, but that money would quickly fall to $0 when everyone left over actually justified outrage.
Despite what everyone would like to believe, these companies are neither stupid nor evil.
Nilay Patel, who actually, you know, bothered to read through the Instagram TOS changes and compare them to the old version.
How dare he ruin a good bitchmeme!
Josh Constine for TechCrunch:
Facebook explains that the update ”creates a solid foundation for the Facebook for Android app moving forward. The infrastructure in place will continue to let us make the app even faster, smoother, and feature-rich.”
The move away from HTML in mobile isn’t just an iOS thing.
Genius use of Timeline that only Facebook has the data to pull off.
