Resistance Is Futile
For a $15 billion dollar company, Facebook continually displays their amateur operations. Not only has the problem of bad statistics been going on for days already, but they fail to post a simple note to the developer’s news/status blog to notify us.
The f8 of the platform is upon us. Creating and maintaining a competitive advantage with Web apps is difficult considering development is easy. It’s a good thing our compusion to create is out-weighs our sorrows upon destruction.
The MySpace Developer Platform is coming soon! Good luck trying to develop for multiple (ever-changing) platforms.
Facebook Freakonomics: Why apps die is a great post explaining the current situation. To sum it up, have fun developing and don’t count on making any money.
Alec Saunders has some very eye-opening stats about the decline of Facebook apps. While some would have you believe this is a foolish conclusion, the numbers prove that the majority of users are feeling app fatigue.
But this has always been the fate (f8) of the platform. If you make apps really simple to build, there will be so much crap that it becomes very hard to find the cream. We wish developers would get their head out of Zuckerberg’s ass and start developing apps that can be distributed outside of the walled garden. Facebook is simply using the platform to gain functionality for free.
Don’t get us wrong - While there is still huge potential, it has become very hard to gain traction with all ever-limiting rules and overload of crap apps.
Facebook fanboys from all across the web would have you believe that the new JavaScript client library is a big deal. But it is not!
The only difference is that the JavaScript library is client-side rather than the server-side API access that has been available since last summer. The disinformation being spread is that you can all of a sudden build FB apps on external web sites, but this has been possible since day 1.
Starting tonight, Facebook is converting the application about pages to use the Facebook Pages infrastructure and format. This is good news, but not if you already spent the time and effort to setup a page for your app. Thanks Facebook for your short-sighted “innovation” that creates more work for developers.
UPDATE: Facebook says they’ll migrate your old page to your app page. Simply email app-about-page@publists.facebook.com and hope they answer your request (we’ve yet to hear from anyone who has gotten help).
Facebook now allows you to clean your profile.
As time has gone on, we’ve received increased complaints from users that friends’ profiles are getting too cluttered, and that people are having trouble finding the information they are looking for on their friends’ profiles. On the other side, users are complaining that their own profiles are cluttered, and they have installed so many applications that it has become overwhelming to un-clutter it.
Rather than let users decide which and how many apps they use, Facebook is killing apps by pushing them to and “extended profile”. This means the user and their friends are unlikely to see or use the app. If a user feels that their profile is cluttered, then they should simple remove the app (box or entirely).
Thanks again for limiting exposure.
Welcome to Zuckerborg.org - Resistance is futile.