'Superpoke' To Be No More, Thanks To Google 97
angry tapir writes "Apparently the age of 'superpoking' social network friends and throwing sheep at them is coming to a close. Google plans to shut down the social applications developed by Slide, a company it acquired a year ago for US$182 million. Slide products include SuperPoke, and photo management and decorating tools like Slideshow and FunPix. Slide's applications like Slideshow were very popular on MySpace during its heyday, and found success on other social networking sites, including Facebook, where the sheep-throwing feature of SuperPoke caught on, entertaining and annoying many."
Superpoke? (Score:1)
Donno if I should compare Superpoke to a VW Superbeetle with upgraded front suspension and a redesigned front clip, or if I should think of it as an orgy relative to the Poke's sexual overtone...
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Much like "a shower, a shit, and a shave," it's a temporally-unordered list.
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wouldn't it make more sense to go out for a coke, a poke, THEN a smoke?
Depends on what you're smoking I suppose.
Goal here seems clear (Score:4)
Another Possibility (Score:1)
Seems silly to purchase a company, then just shut everything they own down.
Not necessarily. The company generates value for Facebook, a competitor of Google's new service, Google +. By shutting the company down, Google could, for example, be engaging in a strategic decision to increase their market power by decreasing the services available to a competitor. This would be not-quite-classic antitrust behavior. IIRC, Google has in the past done other things in defiance of market regulation--didn't one or two members of their board give interviews that were big no-no's under SEC ru
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2. Shut it down
3. ???
4. Evil!
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Getting rid of crappy facebook applications is actually doing the opposite of evil. Google is doing Good here. Thanks Google!
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Getting rid of crappy facebook applications is actually doing the opposite of evil. Google is doing Good here. Thanks Google!
Except that this is most likely an effort to move this application(s) exclusively to Google+.
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They can have them. Who cares? Particularly, who on Slashdot cares?
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Still not caring all that much. Google+ is keeping Facebook in line.
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The Google+ I've seen has a decent grab your shit link.
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You must be new to the corporate world.
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DVDMaestro (Spruce Technologies)
Final Touch Pro
probably a few others.
google are just taking a leaf out of the other software companies' books.
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probably a few others.
I'm sure I've heard of Microsoft doing that a couple of times. [wikipedia.org] And if they did not "extinguish" then they crippled the original product. Not always, but a number of times they did.
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Why have an application that is tied in with a competitor's product?
Like G+ and Google Search on iPhone?
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nah, hivemind
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G+ and Google Search are not tied into the iPhone. I'm pretty sure they can be used on other platforms as well.
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Like Microsoft Office for Mac?
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Microsoft had to keep making Office for Mac, in addition to purchasing non-voting Apple shares, as part of a settlement over stolen Quicktime code. Why they continue to make Office for Mac today is perhaps because it's profitable for the division that makes or that it helps stave off future antitrust problems.
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Microsoft had to keep making Office for Mac, in addition to purchasing non-voting Apple shares, as part of a settlement over stolen Quicktime code.
Why would anyone want to steal Quicktime code, or even use Quicktime?
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It's Microsoft. They ran the numbers and found it was cheaper to steal than create.
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Office is one of microsofts most profitable product lines, just behind windows. It would be commercial suicide for them to kill it off, just to spite a competitor.
Remember: Selling to your competitors customers is more profitable than refusing to sell to them.
Plus I suspect microsoft and apple have an understanding that goes something like "You keep making bootcamp so we can sell mac users windows and we'll keep making office". The presence of apple alternatives to office is more as an insurance policy if m
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Wait, "SuperPoke" is an application?
It appears Facebook is even shittier than I remember.
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What does this mean for Google+? (Score:2)
Does this mean Google+ won't be filled with extremely annoying "applications"?
Re: annoying apps (Score:3, Informative)
Does this mean Google+ won't be filled with extremely annoying "applications"?
Given that in other news Google has confessed that G+ is really an identity clearinghouse and not a socializing gadget, that's exactly what it means.
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Mod this up!
That's pretty much the same exact vibe I've gotten.
Yet here I am using G+...
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Did you even read the linked articles for that story? It was a complete anti-Google FUD piece. Eric Schmidt said that it was an "identity service", but never that it wasn't a social network or that the social aspect was "bait". That was all from the imagination of the poster.
Similarly, if you followed the link that was labeled "will seriously downgrade your other Google services", you would have found an article that claimed "In both scenarios, downgrading from Google+ will have no effect on other Google se
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For some of us, shutting down obnoxious applications on Facebook is providing value to Facebook.
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Uhhh...how EXACTLY is buying a company that provided value to a competitor and shutting it down NOT considered evil?
If they had other reason to want the company (perhaps they wanted the people that worked for it so that they could use their experience for some part of the G+ project?) then shutting it down may just be a side effect of moving the bits they wanted elsewhere and the rest not being viable to carry on as-is.
I doubt Google specifically did this to affect Facebook, because they'd be daft to think it would have any affect beyond a very short term (if that). There are no doubt other apps that do the same thing
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Do you HONESTLY think that guys like you that hate that kind of shit is the targeted audience for FB?
If you nip back and read my post you'll notice I mentioned another significant segment of the facebook population. But you are wrong that my part of the population is not as much part of the target audience as your ex's part. facebook don't care if you play the games or not, as long as you use their site. Their target is the network of links between people, and the warehouse full of data collected from other websites that use facebook's like button and comments features - which they can sell to the advertis
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You're as much a moron as that quote some other poster has of yours would indicate.
It's not evil to shutdown a company that one owns. Period.
Get the torches! And pitchforks! (Score:5, Informative)
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Meanwhile I'm sure they have some real pets who are being neglected.
This must be one of those things that I have blocked cause half the mom's I know are obsessed with that crap.
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"Favorite part of this post? The Farmville moms trolling TC." Brilliant.
Though I have to admit if I were a middle aged woman who put real money into an online game that was suddenly cancelled, I'd probably be pissed, too. Google might want to consider crediting back people for their virtual shit if they want to avoid some bizarre (but interesting) virtual lawsuits...
Re:Get the torches! And pitchforks! (Score:4, Insightful)
Something you guys need to understand - some of these people who play loads of Facebook games put the same kind of emotional investment into them as more "tradtional" hardcore gamers do.
Remember the shitstorm when Modern Warfare 2 wasn't going to have dedicated servers? Or when Starcraft 2 wasn't going to have offline mode or LAN play (currently being repeated for Diablo 3)? It's no different; many of us are just blind to their emotional investment because it's not the games we play or even the type of games we play.
Something changes in the next Zynga or Popcap game and the hardcore gaming crowd goes "lol, casuals". But Duke Nukem has the Calladooty-style 2 weapon limit and a lot of us are mad beyond belief.
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>> they'll have forgotten about it in a month or two anyway
Huh? Women (hell even 8yr old girls) don't forget ANYTHING done or said to them.
Make up your minds! (Score:3)
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As long as they are 100% open in their intentions it's hard to call it evil. If you don't like or agree with those intentions, then you just don't sign up.
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I guess you missed the joke. Identity service = evil (unless you're a marketer). Killing SuperPoke = thoroughly good (unless you're a soccer mom).
Well then. (Score:3)
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Nothing of value was lost (Score:2)
There could be any number of reasons for this.
We don't know how many people used the Slide products. It could very well be that the Slide products were on a downward usage trend...
I mean really...the one thought that popped into my head when I saw the headline was
"And nothing of value was lost."
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Ach, serves me right for not RTFA.
Just a sensible business decision, nothing to see here, move along now people.
No more tossing sheep..... (Score:3)
Take me back to the good old IRC days please. It's been a while since I smacked someone around with a large trout.
Re:No more tossing sheep..... (Score:5, Funny)
What the heck is this sheep-tossing thing anyway? We raise sheep, and if there is an alternative market for our product...
For that matter, we raise Shetlands, which are fairly small sheep: easier to throw and potentially concealable (need a big coat). Also, they have fine wool, so they might not chafe as much when concealed...
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Who ever used the sheeptossing feature, anyway?
The Scottish.
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You're looking down your nose at this, and you want to go back to IRC for, what, its superior intellectual discussions? Have you read bash.org lately?
Okay, let me show you what I mean. This is the first comment that comes up when I click the "random" button:
[High`] its ko myabe uoy cuodl noe dya
And this is down three more quotes:
[torque--> i can fart out loud in an internet cafe because everyones wearing headphones
If that's your idea of the "good old IRC days", no wonder you think virtual sheep tossing is a waste of time...
Superpoke to be killed? What about Superpeek? (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean, G+'s and facebook's obsession with getting our personal data qualifies as a "superpeek"...
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Oh and what's with tech companies spending boat loads of money and then dropping the products? Is this a new fad?
Microsoft - Kin
HP - WebOS/TouchPad
Google - Slide
Really, none of them could think a year ahead?
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"Oh and what's with tech companies spending boat loads of money and then dropping the products? Is this a new fad?
Microsoft - Kin
HP - WebOS/TouchPad
Google - Slide
Really, none of them could think a year ahead?
"
Stock prices have taken a brutal beating this month thanks to the debt ceiling debate and huge pressure is on for companies to cut their expenses to raise their stock price. In finance 101, the goal of a company is always to increase its share price to make daytraders happy. It is never to make money.
T
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In finance 101, the goal of a company is always to increase its share price to make daytraders happy. It is never to make money.
Very, very, very incorrect. I know it must seem that way sometimes but if you do actually take Finance 101 sometime - and I actually did as part of my MBA - or work in a large public corporation, you will find that the truth is quite different.
First, nobody gives a shit about day traders. Second, a public company's responsibility is to its shareholders, the vast numerical majority of which are not daytraders or even shmoes like you and me, but large institutional investors. These companies buy millions of s
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LOL
I did learn this in Finance 101. The guy who taught the course was a former CFO of 2 fortune 500 companies in his career. Infact, he even had that question on the exam as the most important concept in the course. He even had, to make money and of course it was a wrong answer if you selected it.
Most of it dealt with ways to increase the liquidity to boast the share price and by how much netvalue wise and so on. Only small business cares about money. HFT flash systems and day traders are the majority of sh
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Oh and to top if off after rereading your post ... dividends were taught as bad as that money is needed for liquidity to boast its share price. He also taught going in debt is a great thing as it gives great leverage. This I disagreed with as many companies got burned as this induced risk and no leverage if a recession hits.
These are taught today to young accountants and business students and believe me they have taken this lesson to work and run some of these companies. If you have an issue with cost accou
dividends (Score:2)
I once had an accounting professor point out that dividends simply transfer assets from the business to its shareholders, and that the share price might drop to compensate for the fact that the company now has less assets. Some may prefer to get a return in dividend form, but it's not magic.
Though in general, I think it's fair to teach what the theory says as well as what actually happens
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If you're paying a dividend, then you're saying to your shareholders 'I think you can do more with this money than we can'. That's not a good message for a dynamic company to be sending, but it's fine for one in a fairly static position in an established market (i.e. a company in the cash cow phase).
As to keeping investors happy, there are two reasons why a company needs to care about its stock price, and it only needs to care if one or both of these apply:
It is using stock options to pay people. This
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The moral issue I have with this reasoning is it is no longer an investment at this point but rather gambling.
If I handed you some monopoly money from the board game for $100 and told you its ok. John down the street might pay you $120 for that so I would keep it. Meanwhile I pocket the change.
Stocks without dividends are technical worthless pieces of paper with a company name printed on it. Who cares how much money that company makes as long as someone else might think it would be worth more. This is also
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Stocks without dividends are technical worthless pieces of paper with a company name printed on it
No they're not. They're ownership of some percentage of the company. If you buy a bar of gold, an acre of land, or a barrel of oil, they don't pay a dividend either, but you still own something which you believe has value and can later sell to someone else who believes that it has value. You buy them because you believe that they are a safer store of wealth than currency. Modern currencies intentionally inflate to encourage this perception and to make it more attractive to invest your money in companies
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It depends on the industry. Power utilities, for example, are essentially long term finance vehicles. They use the construction of power plants as the means to qcquire long term financing (bonds) at low rates, which they can leverage in the financial markets to increase profits. For them, it's important to maintain long term stable investment, so they tend to provide dividends rather than growth. Growth is pretty much fixed according to their monopoly situation. They also look at their stock as a kind
Cost cutting I see (Score:1)
Is it just me or does it seem like the lack of revenue growth has caused an increase in the amount of bean counters and cost accounting in order to better ballance its share price?
Angry delusion (Score:2)
Regardless of the actual decision, the comments quoted are very scary, a mix of rage an delusion.
But this I think is hilarious:
Iâ(TM)ve heard of suicide missions but this tops them all! If Google really does shut down SuperPoke Pets they might as well close their own doors at the same time.