Rooms is analogus to Slingshot: both apps are cheap clones of popular apps (Whisper/YikYak and Snapchat respectively) with an extra dose of quirky-and-random to appeal to the younger demographic.
I expect Rooms to see the same success as Slingshot. That is, none at all.
Yeah? Not even with Facebook's massive userbase? Features alone never guarantee success. If only .1% of Facebook's users used it, that would be a million users.
By the same token, when something is pushed to all those users and makes relatively little impact, that's a huge opportunity cost for FB. Each time they try something new, it will alienate some users, whether they just visit FB less or stop using altogether or whatever. They would prefer that new products/services make up for that one-time user cost with compensating increased "stickiness" for other users over time, or some similar benefit. They can't annoy their userbase without limit. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part...
The difference between "going somewhere" for a new product and "going somewhere" for a product with an already large userbase is not the same. When you have the numbers Facebook has getting 0.1% of those users is not "going somewhere".
The coloration thing is cute, but it really breaks the invite system. I couldn't for the life of me get it to scan the San Francisco invite. Until I popped it open in Acorn and changed the green to black. That worked really well.
Quite unexpected on the part of Facebook, and looks like an interesting project.
A couple of points on their Privacy page bothers me, though:
> Once you confirm your account, you may delete content you have posted at any time. <…>
> To sign up for Rooms, you may provide us with information such as an email address and usernames. <…>
> We may share information about you within the companies and services operated by Facebook to understand and improve our services [but the information from Rooms won't be posted to Facebook and vice-versa].
It'd be more fun if you couldn't delete your content (so that messages posted a while ago don't lose their context), but instead you could be absolutely anonymous (not even having to provide valid email address, which per above will quite likely be matched with your Facebook account at some point).
>> "It'd be more fun if you couldn't delete your content (so that messages posted a while ago don't lose their context), but instead you could be absolutely anonymous (not even having to provide valid email address, which per above will quite likely be matched with your Facebook account at some point)."
If they did that people would be complaining that Facebook won't let them delete their data.
Cool :) Haven't really run into many on HN familiar with this. We popped up on TC a couple times and managed to get a few thousand users. The cold start problem is tough one to crack though and things ultimately didn't pan out. It's going to be interesting to see how Facebook, Inc. leverages Facebook for Rooms since they have the same problem there.
I also thought of Bunch. We were/are doing something related (but not really) at ReplyAll.me so I had kept track of your company. Were you a dev there?
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadLocalised Pinterest is my current guess? :\",
A flashback? Wouldn't internet bulletin boards have to have gone away for it to be a flashback to them?
Or a bulletin board, also knonw as BBS. Which is kinda like 4chan. Early forums grew out of the BBS/Usenet experience.
I expect Rooms to see the same success as Slingshot. That is, none at all.
Here's one for San Francisco: http://i.imgur.com/qkks5gt.jpg
San Francisco invite that works: http://i.imgur.com/87rGMHw.jpg
A couple of points on their Privacy page bothers me, though:
> Once you confirm your account, you may delete content you have posted at any time. <…>
> To sign up for Rooms, you may provide us with information such as an email address and usernames. <…>
> We may share information about you within the companies and services operated by Facebook to understand and improve our services [but the information from Rooms won't be posted to Facebook and vice-versa].
It'd be more fun if you couldn't delete your content (so that messages posted a while ago don't lose their context), but instead you could be absolutely anonymous (not even having to provide valid email address, which per above will quite likely be matched with your Facebook account at some point).
If they did that people would be complaining that Facebook won't let them delete their data.
http://imgur.com/Jl3siZt
I would like to see an ancient greek thinker comming to one of theses rooms and wondering what are people talking about here.
They pulled it.
[0] http://www.joinbunch.com/
http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01v7T3-5hK7BZ7H...
Londoners - http://i.imgur.com/zlnB5AR.png
Come and join in :)