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Facebook Looks to Stop the Spam
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How many of you are on Facebook and are tired of application request? Well, evidently a lot of Facebook users are.
Here’s a couple of screenshots of groups who are overtly pissed.
Facebook listened to it’s users and created an ‘ignore all’ button for ignoring multiple requests. It’s now looking at ways to make sure that requests are not sent in the first place so that users don’t even need to ‘ignore all’.
Facebook as a result of that is now updating its policy guidelines to make it more difficult for developers to send out application requests at the click of a button.
It’s quite clear that they are doing this mostly to stop pissing people off but I think another reason is that they are trying desperately hard to make applications contextual. Currently what’s happening is that people are picking and choosing their own applications. It would be interesting to see the analytics data but I have a feeling that barely any people use applications referred by friends. Partly, that has a lot to do with the fact that people don’t have the time to sift through all requests. The end result is that people have the perception that application requests are pointless. In the process even the useful requests get sidelined.
So essentially Facebook is trying to make applications as relevant as say a friend request. That will not happen but even if it gets close, its good. It’s a simple call between quality and quantity.
This will probably make it quite difficult for certain branded applications to make themselves supposedly ‘viral’. Only applications with quality and real engagement potential will survive. The biggest complaint that I have with most branded facebook apps is that they barely deliver any ROI – the engagement factor in most of them is also low. With these new guidelines, that complaint will become even more relevant.
The updated guidelines are listed in the Developers Wiki. Here’s a Summary from Inside Facebook:
* Users must not be surprised by the outcome of an action they take.
* To ensure users only take actions they intend, an application must avoid one-click triggers of actions that apply to multiple people, except in special circumstances.
* To ensure users only take actions they intend, multiple recipients must be selected by the user, rather than pre-selected by the application.
Personally I think there can be only a few thousand useful applications – not the few hundred thousands we already see. There should be a way to not give certain non-quality applications – loopholes that can be exploited. This is the 1st step.
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The walls! I hate them the walls.. how many walls do these guys make man advanced wall.. fun wall.. superwall.. The wall.. what do I do with all these walls..
ok.. sorry for the rant.. but yeah that was just to add to Harshil’s point above about users having the need to manage app requests better..
However.. I’m not clear about how FB is making app requests contextual.. or even as relevant as friend requests.. how does this step from FB lead to that…?
if the app requests do not need to be of a certain number and if the request in some way makes you find those 1 or 2 friends who are likely to like the particular application as opposed to a 100 who may hate it - then it becomes relevant right? So for example i added the friendfeed application and i knew u might like it but it showed me the standard page where i was shown all my friends and asked to invite 20 or something like that. It dint even try to ‘coax’ me into inviting you if you know what i mean.
Hmm… alright.. that makes a lot of sense yeah… hmm.. I dunno from the face of it, I think it opens up a lot of scope and opportunities for marketers to be involved as well.. marketers for these apps that are developed..