Over the past seven months or so, I've been following the development of fbChat and the newly launched Facebook redesign rather closely in anticipation of their releases. A side effect of this is that I've also found myself exposed to a lot of bitching amongst developers about what these changes would mean to them. I guess I should probably backtrack a little first.
Last year, Facebook released their API to the developer community to open up the possibilities for applications on the platform. The results have been mixed at best. On the one hand, many developers took this opportunity to create applications like Causes, which allows users to donate via Facebook to various causes and to recruit their friends. This, I believe, is the type of application Facebook was hoping would come out of opening up their API.
Unfortunately, a much larger percentage of developers saw this as an opportunity to take advantage of users by creating programs that not only incentivized spamming one's friends with application requests, but actually required it in many cases, in order to actually use the application. The term the developers used to describe the desired effect of this as the "virality" of their application.
Before I continue, let's take a moment to reflect on this word, "virality." What many developers were optimistically comparing their applications to were viruses. You know, like HIV or Ebola. Seriously?! I understand that developers are hoping to make money, just like the rest of us, but do they really have to be so sleazy about it? Why can't more developers have a sense of ethics and make programs for good?
Well, Facebook tolerated this behavior for a while, but a few months ago, they finally lashed out and began pulling applications for short periods of time, if the developers at Facebook felt that the application was abusing its users' rights. You wouldn't believe how pissed off the developer community was about this. Too bad for them, because Facebook has given them a deadline to adhere to a code of conduct Facebook created (since the developers clearly didn't have their own), after which point they will begin pulling applications from the site.
Finally, a step in the right direction. This combined with the redesign's relocation of applications away from the front of profiles may finally achieve the result Facebook thought would have been self-evident and self-creating last summer. Maybe, instead of bitching and moaning about how this is going to be like an anti-virus to their applications, those developers most threatened by this should focus their efforts on creating worthwhile applications?
Just a thought.
d-rock out.
