The Case For Apple Buying Facebook 255
The article makes the case that Jobs has been hinting that he wants to actually spend some of the $51 billion Apple has been sitting on, and that Facebook is a likely candidate. Considering how thin the Ping social network is, and the integration issues the two companies have had, there are some good reasons for such a deal. And a heck of a lot of reasons why not.
Apps (Score:2, Interesting)
Since all of /. knows how tight Apple is with its apps, perhaps an Apple acquisition of facebook would force the latter to get rid of all the stupid apps present therein...
One could hope.
Re:Not that stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Knowing their abilities with marketing, they could easily convince people that it was the only good way to use Facebook on the go, especially since it would tie in nicely with their existing "you are a cool person with a large social circle" branding.
Shelf Life (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think Jobs is dumb enough to buy Facebook.
Right now it's the darling of the social internet, but a few years ago that title belonged to MySpace. Remember MySpace?
These sites don't have a very long shelf life. They're popular for a few years, and then they die off when the next, newest popular social media site takes off.
Maybe Facebook would get a real UI (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not that stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a little incongruency though, in that because the iPhone has a real web browser, it's a lot better to just go to the full website (full functionality).
the Facebook for iPhone app is good for browsing quickly while on the go, but if you want to actually do anything beyond look at a status, a bookmark to the
Re:Maybe Facebook would get a real UI (Score:2, Interesting)
You are kidding right? I've been trying for years to figure out how to properly add new songs without duplicating anything to my iTunes collection that i didn't buy from iTunes. Wanna try and explain to my dad over the phone how to synchronize his itouch, I'll be glad to give you his number I can assure you he's pretty computer savoy and won't ask any stupid questions.
Just because there is only one button that does anything in an Apple world doesn't mean they are good at making software. It simply means all they could make properly was one button sorta work like they think you should use it.
Shareholder Value (Score:1, Interesting)
Yep, that's really giving back to the shareholders....
Once the stock tanks, they won't be happy about Steve spending their money so easily.
Re:Maybe Facebook would get a real UI (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly, their expertise in software doesn't seem to extend to web interfaces. Their developer portal for iOS development is shockingly bad and I've run across a number of cross-browser problems and missing functionality. iTunes Connect is even worse - I reported a major data loss bug to them that was triggered by using tabs, and their solution was "don't use tabs". Quite honestly Facebook and Apple are right down there at joint bottom when it comes to buggy and just plain broken web apps. Words cannot express how dismal their efforts are. If they were ever to get together and have a web baby, the sun would explode and I would welcome the fiery oblivion.
Re:Stretch that dollar. (Score:4, Interesting)
Adobe makes some sense, but not really overall, too much on the PC and no niche for mass consumer sales.
Yahoo doesn't make sense, unless Apple starts viewing itself like Google, and it shouldn't do that.
Novell is the most interesting, if only so they can compete with Microsoft's AD. But again, that ultimately doesn't make sense.
Apple's success of late has been in the consumer device market. Along those lines, buying Nintendo makes much much more sense. The Wii is a good Apple like product, simple device that is popular with all but the hardcore Xbox boys. Xbox and PS3 are owned by large corps and likely not on the market (assuming Nitendo is). Nintendo would make an awesome media server for a house. Hell with Netflix Channel now running it freakin feels like an iPhone.
The only other thing I would think Apple would be aiming for would be content delivery channels (Cable/SatTV), or content that is delivered (Netflix).
Re:Not that stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Is Facebook for sale? (Score:3, Interesting)
Idle Speculation (Score:4, Interesting)
This sort of idle speculation belongs in idle, don't you think?
"There are some good reasons for Apple to buy Facebook. And lots of reasons not to. They probably won't, but, hey, you're reading this, aren't you?"
Re:If Apple bought Facebook (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is this modded as Funny? The gist of it is really the reason Apple would consider such a buy: To make it iPhone-only or at least a hell of a lot more iPhone-friendly then on Android.
Seriously, mobile is the now and the future, most especially for social media. And the Android experiance is already leaps and bounds ahead of iPhone (even if sales data doesn't yet reflect it). If Apple doesn't find a huge stake to put into the heart of Android soon, there won't be Apple left.
Mac - Windows 7 really and cheap hardware really does make buying a Mac a vanity option at best.
iPod - Dedicated media players are dead, thanks to smart phones.
iTouch/iPhone - Dead: Android blows them away already and the gap is getting larger every moment.
iPad - Alive for now, but see above about Android blowing iOS away... A combination of Android being a better system and 7" tablets being a better form factor will equal the death of iPads.
Apple TV - DOA, way too little way too late.
Apple stock will continue to rise for a bit, but they're going to have to pull something ACTUALLY magical out of Steve Job's ass very soon or they will quickly be marginalized.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)