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@rrhoover we built the infrastructure for such product a year ago! http://batch.com/insights/api
Good move by Facebook, it's going to be interesting to see how notifications (on iOS particularly) is going to adapt to more apps going this route. Apps are certainly going to have to fight to get your attention in an already busy feed.
@drewmeyers If I'm honest with myself and just look at what Facebook has done and is progressively moving toward in many ways like Drew was saying it feels a bit like they are out of touch.
Is this in the interest to simply serve notification ads? If not what pain is it really solving.
What people don't have is time and they need help with reading comprehension.
What about reading comprehension which has continuously been on the decline...and time it's as if Facebook gave me more content I don't care about at the moment I could care less about it and I don't have time to digest it and even when I'm doing os I can't remember what I read really weather I speak another language or not.
I didn't get any feeling their was intelligent context tied to curating the right experience around value for each individual that will be using this.
and then what you know what I want to receive but don't solve the pains I have when consuming information?
What about a more cultural approach....not simply in the form of localisation but dynamically adapting this to the needs of people outside of the us and who only speak english.
The average user has 189 apps installed on their phone...that's a lot of notification spam on top of another system just focused on sending you notifications.
Is this just an MVP from a $300 billion dollar company, from their track record it seems like it simply doesn't share the same motivations of adding immense value tied to truly solving a core issue and not just doing something in a different way but better.
@nicholassheriff I really don't think getting more information is a problem anyone needs...or wants...solved. Information overload is the problem with the entire web, yet all we get are more apps to give us more information we must sort through. As you said, time is the real problem.
A world face to face is better than a world through your screen, no matter what fancy new technology exists or how much the media tries to brainwash people to think otherwise.
@drewmeyers @nicholassheriff BINGO exactly we think we are doing this amazing thing by overloading people with tech like what did they do without this stuff BE BETTER in many ways. We are worse off with majority of these experiences.
I think this is one great example of we can build it but well...should we?
@nicholassheriff Right. People can build anything. But just because they can, doesn't mean they should. Everyone has the right to work on whatever they want to work on of course, I just choose to spend my time helping get people together in the real world rather than spend more time on their phones. The "time suck" economy annoys me to no end, but I see no end in sight.
@drewmeyers @nicholassheriff lolol Yesss Drew the "time suck economy" is so perfect of a line, technology isn't our nemesis it is the very people choosing to build these experiences with misplaced motivations at times. I'm the same way buddy I survived skin cancer a year and a half ago and I'll be dammed if I'm going to take time out to build experiences that simply steal the most precious thing we have, which is our time and that at the end were just in service to ads ( spam ) and less about adding any real value at all.
I think it makes for a better world when we all are held to a higher sense of accountability...like Steve Jobs said the sad reality of what a monopoly is even in forms of our education system is summed up with one line: "we don't care because we don't have to". I'm optimistic some of the recent shifts in power and influence have shown that we have more of a say in sowing seeds of change weather we are the innovators trying to do things in a better way, or those on the sidelines saying this isn't right.
Ah, well... I can only look at this and smile... I built Notifo in 2010 which was essentially the same product of letting consumers receive notifications from any source they wanted (complete with developer API)... http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/18... - sadly without much traction it died a slow painful death. I like to think it was just ahead of its time. I have a soft spot in my heart for notifications, so I'll be watching this one intently.
@jazzychad Do you think it was timing, or do you think it was something else? Does Notify, or other apps like it, solve anything people don't already have solved? Seems like a solution looking for a problem, rather than a problem in need of a solution.
@m_mozafarian @jazzychad Traction is irrelevant it literally is an absolutely irrelevant metric outside of raising vc money or validating ego ( it doesn't tell you if a product is creating real value ) because everyone can leave tomorrow...it says nothing about core value and solving a need...just look at Facebooks other products that gained some initial traction, why because they have 1 billion users that why.
*value = retention ( no one has every been retained without adding value, if the value decreases you churn )
Slingshot
Facebook Poke
Facebook Camera
Facebook Home
Rooms
Riff
I can go on for days...my point exactly.
@m_mozafarian @jazzychad exactly which = value .....you can not have retention without value, the very reason why people are retained is because they find value which is my point exactly.
@jazzychad "I launched Pushover (https://pushover.net/) this week. I built it over the past 4 weeks to replace my use of Notifo, which shut down last year." 4 years ago, This was posted on HackerNews by Joshua Stein, Founder of Pushover. Now, Pushover is one of the biggest notification platforms, thanks to IFTTT+Pushover.
I'm absolutly agree with you & @m_mozafarian about timing as one of the major success factors. Bill Gross elaborated it perfectly:
https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_g...
This is an attempt to be a better way to consume news...which is basically what Twitter is already. My question is whether there is enough sources that "matter" to make a standalone app? For me, the only things that matter enough to actually look at every notification are close friends (text), work conversations about Horizon or consulting work (slack)...and that's about it. I may be an outlier, but I don't really read mainstream news; just follow relevant industry news (but virtually no source is good enough that I'd want to get notified every time they published anything). I'm not sure what the solid use case is for Notify. For me, there isn't one.
PS: I'm surprised Facebook made their landing page with WordPress. Anyone else find that odd?
Another thought I just had about this... could this be FB's backdoor inroad into Twitter's real-time news dominance? Notify is basically Dead Simple Twitter.... if you stripped down Twitter for one of its main use-cases (following news/celebrity accounts), this is what it would look like.
@jazzychad I think it's funny that's such a main use case for Twitter. To me, that's a completely irrelevant use case. All these social platforms (FB, Twitter, Snapchat) really are just morphing into the same thing; only one of them will survive long term if the trend continues.
@drewmeyers @jazzychad ....sums up twitters major core value issue right here...but they are busy changing the icons of their website and celebrating to realize.
Sorry, Facebook. The "notifications that matter from sources you love" aren't these: https://notify.co/sources/
The last thing I need is more celebrity news, gossip, CNN garbage headlines and other crap on my notifications screen. I was really hoping that this would be a way to get notifications from people in my life, or important things. Even if I could try this (and I can't, because for some reason it's US-only - seriously?), I'll take a pass. I get enough crap from these sources in my feed already that I have to continually hide one source at a time.
I must be the antithesis of the target market for this. I can't stand mobile notifications (in general) and can't imagine turning them on for anything but texts from my wife. I don't even have notifications for e-mail turned on. This isn't just for me: I also get frustrated by people stopping mid-sentence to look at a notification that just came in. So no thank you, I can't say adding more distraction to everyone's lives is a great idea.
$$$ I'm sure it's a great way for facebook to learn about their users' interests in great detail without them having to "like" pages on facebook itself. $$$
Co-founder of Hooks (https://www.producthunt.com/tech...) here, we are happy to welcome Facebook to the real-time information era, this proves our concept and vision :) @juliangutman @benjamindauer.
What is it that Facebook wants to get out of this app - another app to keep track of the news - I mean, I don't use Facebook to find the latest news...
Facebook needed to do this because you simply cannot get regular updates from pages or groups that you follow any more. The newsfeed is a cluttered mess of crappy viral videos.
@katesegrin less frictions, less apps, more revenues for Facebook (I'm assuming) and more visibility for the partners, which should lead to more money for them, too.
Wasn't quite sure what value I was going to get when I signed up for this, but I just received a timely / valuable notification about a gunman right near my house. I'm going to mark this as a pretty remarkable 'aha' moment for me and Notify.
Great job to those involved!
When FB is notifying me of highly relevant tweets that Twitter never even surfaces for me, doesn't get much better than that.
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