Facebook pumps up its contributions to the open-source software community and the growing number of users who have joined its Android testers program. December 4, 2013 12:48 PM PST Christian Legnitto, Facebook's manager of mobile release engineering, talks open source. (Credit: Donna Tam/CNET) MENLO PARK, Calif. -- More than 150 million people help Facebook test its Android app, the social network said Wednesday. Christian Legnitto, Facebook's manager of mobile release engineering, said the company has more than 1 million users who have signed up for the company's beta testers program and 50 million users for its alpha program. The two programs let users try out early versions of Facebook's app before it's released to the public. That means the apps are buggy and unpolished, but users can give instant feedback within the app. This lets the company improve its app quickly. While both versions are early, the alpha program, which started in October, is for the Android app, that has the latest code, "hot off the presses every night," according to Legnitto. The testing programs is just one of the way Facebook transformed itself into a mobile first company. In addition to changing it's internal process for delivering apps, the company has remained dedicated to its open-source software roots, Legnitto said. To solve issues with building apps quickly, Facebook, like other companies, has had to create new code. It share its code for free for with the public. Already, companies like Pinterest and Path use tools built by Facebook, Legnitto said. It is currently pushing 100 open source projects, which has thousands of contributions from the open source community -- that includes companies like Digg, Airbnb and Dropbox. Related stories Facebook dominates mobile apps, survey says Snapchat poaches Facebook exec for COO role Facebook cutting fluff out of news feeds The projects include ways to test apps faster, generate real-time crash reports, and features, like the code used to create Facebook's Chat Heads messaging feature. Legnitto said Facebook had to create the messaging feature's code from scratch and he hopes to see other companies use the code to add the feature to their apps. "We're really excited to solve these hard problems and give it to the community as give it to the community as well as benefit from when the community takes these things and use them to do really interesting things," he said.
Facebook pumps up its contributions to the open-source software community and the growing number of users who have joined its Android testers program.
Christian Legnitto, Facebook's manager of mobile release engineering, talks open source.
(Credit: Donna Tam/CNET)
MENLO PARK, Calif. -- More than 150 million people help Facebook test its Android app, the social network said Wednesday.
Christian Legnitto, Facebook's manager of mobile release engineering, said the company has more than 1 million users who have signed up for the company's beta testers program and 50 million users for its alpha program. The two programs let users try out early versions of Facebook's app before it's released to the public. That means the apps are buggy and unpolished, but users can give instant feedback within the app. This lets the company improve its app quickly.
While both versions are early, the alpha program, which started in October, is for the Android app, that has the latest code, "hot off the presses every night," according to Legnitto.
The testing programs is just one of the way Facebook transformed itself into a mobile first company. In addition to changing it's internal process for delivering apps, the company has remained dedicated to its open-source software roots, Legnitto said.
To solve issues with building apps quickly, Facebook, like other companies, has had to create new code. It share its code for free for with the public. Already, companies like Pinterest and Path use tools built by Facebook, Legnitto said. It is currently pushing 100 open source projects, which has thousands of contributions from the open source community -- that includes companies like Digg, Airbnb and Dropbox.
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The projects include ways to test apps faster, generate real-time crash reports, and features, like the code used to create Facebook's Chat Heads messaging feature. Legnitto said Facebook had to create the messaging feature's code from scratch and he hopes to see other companies use the code to add the feature to their apps.
"We're really excited to solve these hard problems and give it to the community as give it to the community as well as benefit from when the community takes these things and use them to do really interesting things," he said.
