Facebook Buys Customer-Service Software Maker Kustomer For About $1 Billion (bloomberg.com) 13
Facebook has acquired Kustomer, a New York-based software company that helps businesses manage customer conversations from multiple services on one dashboard. From a report: The social media giant made the deal to bolster its nascent messaging business, which is expanding to include customer-service products that help companies interact with people via chat apps, like WhatsApp and Messenger. "Any business knows that when the phone rings, they need to answer it. Increasingly, texts and messages have become just as important as that phone call -- and businesses need to adapt," Facebook executives wrote in a blog post. Kustomer also offers automated tools so companies can handle easier customer requests using bots. The deal values Kustomer at a little over $1 billion, WSJ reported.
Kustomer (Score:4, Funny)
That's the KDE version, btw. The GNOME one is "gnome-custserv-app-software-manufacturer-co", but the question feature is deferred "until the next release" and it requires systemd.
Also, it's a daemon, not service -- what is this, Windows?
Pets.com (Score:2)
This could actually be really invasive (Score:2)
Imagine a new customer service feature that links a customer record to their facebook profile and mines your post for comments on their products or their competitors. That could get fucking scary.
Facebook buying a potential threat (Score:3)
These sorts of interoperability tools are often how people transition off dependency on a vendor. Think how Microsoft had tools for interacting with Novel Netware.
Facebook is buying not a competitor but a threat. Something that could make it practical for companies to interact with customers on platforms that compete with Facebook.
But I'm sure it's fine. Nothing to see here, move along.
Re: (Score:2)
Hm.
1. Create multi-client messaging app (weekend job for russian-hackers.com?)
2. ???
3. Sell to Facebook for a billion dollars
4. Profit!
Software's harder than you think (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Facebook didn't buy a multi-system messaging app. And I'm not rich because way back when putting "Linux" in a company name pretty much guaranteed you could sell it to some suckers for millions of dollars, I decided I'd rather do something more useful with my life.
What was ACTUALLY sold here? (Score:2)
Any company valued in the billions is worth asking the question; What exactly did THE social media giant buy here? A nothing-to-see-here company, or their fucking treasure chest of personal data?
Have you checked your Kustomer EULA lately? I wonder just how much of a kustomer people really have been over the years.
(And yes, we should always be asking these questions, especially if your EULA prohibits the transfer of information "outside" of the company)
Re: (Score:3)
"Have you checked your Kustomer EULA lately? I wonder just how much of a kustomer people really have been over the years."
The Advertisers are Facebook's customers not you, you are the product.
Re: (Score:2)
"Have you checked your Kustomer EULA lately? I wonder just how much of a kustomer people really have been over the years."
The Advertisers are Facebook's customers not you, you are the product.
You are the entity that Agrees to "your" data being shared on any particular platform.
The capability of said platform to abuse your data increases exponentially based on the price tag from the products perspective. If the service is "free", then expect maximum abuse.
Bottom line is, Kustomers (or products) usually have no fucking clue what is being bought and sold about them. And my point stands.
Re: (Score:2)
What's sold here is a lottery ticket: it's a change to invest in something that might be worth a lot more later.
In this case, right now the company's real worth is probably a billion Monopoly dollars. Facebook is betting that it'll be worth more than a billion real dollars some day - and since their coffers are quite full, it's no real skin off their back.