FB's app is the product of a web-based service that's been transported to the mobile platform, while Path and Instagram are native to and created for mobile. While this is obvious, consider all the functionality that FB already had on the web that had to be transported into their web app; a ton of thought had to go into retaining FB's functionality along with the innovation inherently required of anyone who creates a new mobile app. The way they did this - while preserving their functionality and retaining FB's already established feel - itself required took much innovation.<p>Path and Instagram were created inherently for mobile, and have much simpler functionality models. I'm not saying that this should take away from the remarkable achievements that both have had, nor am I saying that FB's app doesn't need improvements, but perhaps that this is just an unfair knock on FB's mobile app/strategy thus far.
<i>As the “mobile Internet” becomes the Internet</i><p>This sounds like the type of thing you'd hear from someone who thinks the blue 'e' icon is 'The Internet'.
What's inventive for me is having a social networking app that is usable by most phones worldwide.<p>Facebook has mobile web app that is accesible even with the most basic feature phone out there.<p>Path & Instagram only works for Android & IPhone while majority of the phones out there are still feature phones.
Huh? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Facebook's iPhone app was the first to use the slide out menus that don't take you away from the main screen. Path copied this exact approach with its new app.
Uninventive? Path and Instagram are just better looking CRUDs in mobile. Come back to me when either of them improves the quality of social interactions by a multiple.
"But boy is Facebook’s mobile presence looking bland these days."<p>TBH if the guy is just judging business and there processes on visual appeal and not product/content/service or any concern for users he's an idiot. What works for one company is no guarantee it will work for another.<p>He's also failing to comprehend how large the user base is how much they organise and fight change already. The demographics are completely different.
I admit the Facebook iPhone app is a little buggy, though I have to hand it to them, they have made a number of UI elements which now seem to be common place on the App Store.<p>e.g. IIRC they were one of the first apps to have a grid based menu system (ref: Google+ app, Bump, etc) and (I think) also the first app to have sliding menus (where the main view is slid to the right to reveal the menu hidden underneath the main view).
FB is on a way different level than path and instagram. first off, path and instagram focus on mobile and FB doesn't. If FB was a tiny little startup I think they would be rockin mobile. FB is focusing on what makes them $... the website. Lame to compare a big apple and to raisins.
Inventiveness and compellingness are orthogonal. Facebook's mobile applications are excellent. They don't feel like a crippled, compromised version of Facebook. They feel like Facebook. Instagram and Path have the opposite problem: their web interfaces are second-class.