Saturday, February 16, 2008
Facebook Refines Interactions
After Facebook opened the Platform to third-party developers in September 2006, developers, Facebook, and users started to learn how these new opportunities would play out. Two sets of applications emerged fairly quickly (and, in fact, these two categories existed even before the Platform was opened).
The first set of apps consisted of entertainment, games, quizzes, and the like. They can be satisfying in and of themselves, but they are even more interesting when a variety of people are using them--particularly one's friends. The second set consisted of apps that had intrinsic content either on Facebook or in external databases such as Flixster, GoodReads, and the like. (And, of course, here are cross-over apps: is US Politics a game or something more serious....the question goes beyond Facebook and is not a topic we'll discuss here.)
In the first set, driving adds of the app are important, because many Facebook features are available only to users who have added the app. More important, many of these apps provide a benefit to users but earn money for their developers through ads, and ads depend on traffic.
The viral features of Facebook or any social networking site work in many ways. A number of developers and users have pointed out that techniques such as forced-invitations to friends to add the apps in order to use them or sudden interruptions requiring adds can be distracting (polite word). Facebook has responded (at the link above) by forbidding some techniques:
1. If a user tries to use an app and gets a dead-end page requiring sending invitations to friends in order to continue, that is no longer allowed. This applies at the beginning as well as during the use of the app when a dead-end may prevent a user from continuing a process that has already been started.
2. If a user declines to invite friends, the app must never (as in "til the end of time") prompt again.
This should make a much better user experience, but the howls from some developers are loud.
In addition, Facebook has been refining the News Feed. Beginning with publishTemplatizedAction, the News Feed and Mini Feed have moved to more structured storied. Instead of the app just sending text to the News Feed, now we're constructing stories with some syntax as in {actor} did something to {target}. This enables Facebook to aggregate disparate stories (X and Y and Z did that to A). (This is described in my book.)
Finally, the notifications/invitations/requests that people can send via Facebook are no longer subject to hard-and-fast daily limits. The limits are computed dynamically and are shown to developers on their app's statistics page. The limits reflect user reactions to these notifications.
What's really interesting about Facebook is that all of these changes have been predictable. The API changes in the last few months are what have allowed the policy changes to take place, and it seems to be going well.
For Facebook guidelines to morph into rules is scarcely a burden for developers. However, developers who look for ways around the guidelines (or even the rules), have helped Facebook codify those guidelines and enforce the rules. Users win because the experience is better and more predictable; developers who play by the rules win because they can focus on providing more value to users.
The first set of apps consisted of entertainment, games, quizzes, and the like. They can be satisfying in and of themselves, but they are even more interesting when a variety of people are using them--particularly one's friends. The second set consisted of apps that had intrinsic content either on Facebook or in external databases such as Flixster, GoodReads, and the like. (And, of course, here are cross-over apps: is US Politics a game or something more serious....the question goes beyond Facebook and is not a topic we'll discuss here.)
In the first set, driving adds of the app are important, because many Facebook features are available only to users who have added the app. More important, many of these apps provide a benefit to users but earn money for their developers through ads, and ads depend on traffic.
The viral features of Facebook or any social networking site work in many ways. A number of developers and users have pointed out that techniques such as forced-invitations to friends to add the apps in order to use them or sudden interruptions requiring adds can be distracting (polite word). Facebook has responded (at the link above) by forbidding some techniques:
1. If a user tries to use an app and gets a dead-end page requiring sending invitations to friends in order to continue, that is no longer allowed. This applies at the beginning as well as during the use of the app when a dead-end may prevent a user from continuing a process that has already been started.
2. If a user declines to invite friends, the app must never (as in "til the end of time") prompt again.
This should make a much better user experience, but the howls from some developers are loud.
In addition, Facebook has been refining the News Feed. Beginning with publishTemplatizedAction, the News Feed and Mini Feed have moved to more structured storied. Instead of the app just sending text to the News Feed, now we're constructing stories with some syntax as in {actor} did something to {target}. This enables Facebook to aggregate disparate stories (X and Y and Z did that to A). (This is described in my book.)
Finally, the notifications/invitations/requests that people can send via Facebook are no longer subject to hard-and-fast daily limits. The limits are computed dynamically and are shown to developers on their app's statistics page. The limits reflect user reactions to these notifications.
What's really interesting about Facebook is that all of these changes have been predictable. The API changes in the last few months are what have allowed the policy changes to take place, and it seems to be going well.
For Facebook guidelines to morph into rules is scarcely a burden for developers. However, developers who look for ways around the guidelines (or even the rules), have helped Facebook codify those guidelines and enforce the rules. Users win because the experience is better and more predictable; developers who play by the rules win because they can focus on providing more value to users.
Labels: facebook
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