DISQUS

Andrew Chen (@andrew_chen): Help me fill in the blanks: iPhone platform versus Facebook platform

  • aweissman · 1 year ago
    As categories, I would say add "ease of development" and "opportunuties for viral platform distribution" or something like that
  • Ed Baker · 1 year ago
    The Facebook platform is also inherently more social than the iPhone platform because Facebook gives app developers access to their social graph. As a result, there seem to be more single-person apps like Labyrinth, Pandora, Tap Tap, etc. that are most popular on the iPhone vs. more social apps like Top Friends, Super Wall, Compare People, etc. that are most popular on Facebook.
  • Tim Jahn · 1 year ago
    I think they're different worlds of sorts because the iPhone apps provide all sorts of users and functionality on a mobile scale. It also brings the social aspect of Facebook apps to the mobile side and enhances it using location data.
  • Dave Stone · 1 year ago
  • daveevans · 1 year ago
    Market Size - potential and existing.
    Cost to develop apps
    Categories of popular apps (like solo vs. group as stated above.)
    Platform (FB) vs. communications channel (iphone)
    To previous commenter - iphone profiles http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/09/iphones-m...
    Crashability - FB= high, Apple = low. ;-)
  • Matt · 1 year ago
    Pricing should be broken out into developer cost vs. user cost, because a dev has to spend $99 for access to the app store. Other possible breakdowns

    Coding language:
    Facebook = anything like PHP/Ruby/Python/ASP/JSP
    iPhone = Cocoa

    Extra hardware:
    Facebook = none
    iPhone = Intel-based Mac running 10.5 Leopard (probably good to have an iPhone too)

    Market Size:
    Facebook = 100 million users
    iPhone = 5 million activated phone (rough guess)
  • eas · 1 year ago
    Developer Community: Apple: Strangled by NDA Facebook: ?Open & Supportive?
    Audience: Apple: People who pay $200+ for cell phones & $60+/month service Facebook: Anyone with access to a computer with an internet connection.
    Mobile Internet Penetration Among Userbase: Facebook: ? iPhone: 100%
  • hans · 1 year ago
    rows:
    easy payment experience for consumers (ie: one click)
    natural native gestures / UI
    location information availability
    always with you
    offline availability
  • Joe Ludwig · 1 year ago
    Implementation options feels like it deserves a row. Facebook can use pretty much anything the web can use. I'm not sure, but I think that iPhone apps are limited to Objective C and javascript/dhtml on the web side.

    IPhone supports location-based apps, where Facebook only supports MAYBE what city you're in (though the network or GeoIP).

    Should there be a row that describes the difference between the "always in your pocket" nature of a phone app and the "when I remember to browse to it" nature of Facebook?
  • noah · 1 year ago
  • Ryan · 1 year ago
    Usage Metrics: Facebook = started out as installs, progressed to monthly actives. iPhone = installs.

    The difference being that the usage data is available for FB apps, but not for iPhones. For example, out of the 1M+ Tap Tap installs, what's the usage pattern? I, for one, played about 3 songs before deciding that it was boring and went back to playing Sudoku. Two weeks later, I discovered it was still on my phone and uninstalled it. But that kind of data isn't available.

    It probably doesn't matter for paid apps, but for free apps, especially those hoping to monetize with the numerous iPhone ad solutions in the works, it could be important to know, but probably won't ever be.
  • Harrison Rose · 1 year ago
    Other questions to ask on the comparison include:
    # Active Users
    State of developer relations
    Ease of getting started as a developer
    Cost of developer tools (while everyone who is a developer will already own a PC, most will not own an iPhone, and what software will they need in which to program)
  • kevin · 1 year ago
    User demographics
  • jontien · 1 year ago
    Lack of a payments platform for FB apps seems to be a pretty big difference
  • ian · 1 year ago
    Completely unrelated, but I was wondering whether your redesign / twitter header and so forth affected any of your stats?
  • Andrew Chen · 1 year ago
    actually they haven't ;-) It's been about the same, although Twitter does bring in some traffic. I think Twitter's useful for sure.
  • Mike Gowen · 1 year ago
    A little late on this, but here are two more that I don't see in the comments...

    - Comparison of the incentive funds of each platform
    - Engagement potential with respective hardware constraints (shameless plug http://tinyurl.com/5sqofs)