Facebook Reveals New List of App Developer Do’s and Don’ts
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Written By Drupad Sil | August 28, 2007 | Share This
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Facebook senior platform developer Dave Morin today announced the do’s and don’ts of Facebook app construction in a post on the developers’ blog. Morin’s post outlines the social networking site’s recent spam-fighting efforts, that are intended to “shift the balance more in favor of good apps, which we think in the long term is good for everyone”.
There are several notable changes described by Morin in his announcement. First, applications’ profile boxes will no longer be able to display content that the user isn’t aware of, meaning what they see is what they get. There won’t be any more “add this app!” or “related apps” eyesores that users are unwittingly displaying to visitors. Tied to this is Facebook’s effort to prevent applications from spamming users’ friends to add the app. After the changes, users will have to manually select everyone they would like to invite to add an application, finally getting rid of underhanded attempts to get users to add apps to “see what someone has just written” etc… To help users make more informed decisions about what apps to add, searches for applications to add will display metrics focused on user engagement, rather than just the total number of users. Developers will no longer be able to mass e-mail their app’s users, although Facebook may add another way to contact users in the future. Finally, the team is enabling News Feed stories to be shown even to users to who don’t have the application added.
The changes are certainly welcome, if the online community’s response is any indication. However, there are those who are concerned that the Facebook team hasn’t done enough to address the problem. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch discusses some of the issues:
“Since application developers aren’t penalized for finding the weaknesses in the Facebook platform, expect them (and their venture dollars) to continue to focus on finding the next hole to exploit. If Facebook were to slap a few of the worst offenders on the wrist, perhaps others would lose the incentive to engage in bad behavior.
Also, the changes are very cumbersome for even the non-abusers. For example, applications will now need to find another way to contact users since email is out. That creates uncertainty, and reduces the incentive for the good guys to innovate since they don’t know if functionality will disappear.
At the end of the day, it may take more to police this ecosystem than occasional band aids to the platform to stop abuse as it appears. A more subjective reward and punishment system may eventually evolve where Facebook takes an active role in policing the behavior of application developers. It may or may not be a good thing, but it is almost certainly inevitable.”
Indeed, direct policing may be the right step to take for the social networking site. Misleading notifications and broken app functionality have become a huge liability for the site since the API went public in 2006. To be fair to the development team, the site has experience massive growth in the past six months, which when coupled with the lofty expectations of the site offered by the mainstream media and userbase create a standard that may well be impossible to live up to. Ian Lamont at Computerworld Blogs has some more to say:
“Nevertheless, Facebook has to do more to improve the user experience, and fix the many broken parts of the site. The company also must avoid the temptation to believe giddy predictions about valuation and world domination. Users just want an experience that works, and works well. They will start to abandon ship if Facebook doesn’t keep up with their needs, and something better comes along.”
While that’s certainly true, it seems that Facebook understands the problems and is actively working to address them. When the changes are eventually rolled out, we’ll have to see how thorough they are - and whether developers find more loopholes to exploit or not.
Topics: Social Media |