Facebook Developers

Dont get rid of add system, but make it easy to remove off the apps we dont use. Thanks.

luke wrote:

- Thirdly, what happens to post add and post remove?  How are we now supposed to keep track of who is using our apps?  Previously when a user would remove one of my apps, I would remove all the data that my app stored for them.  If users can no longer add, and therefore I logically assume they can't remove an app, how will I know when I should or shouldn't store data for that user.  This has, in my opinion, privacy issues.  As previously I'd know they had removed the app, and so would know I should no longer display their data in the app to their friends.  Now it seems that I would no longer know this.

Exactly what I thought when first reading the news. Keeping user data can also take some space on the server, and we need to know when a user decides to stop using an application.

Not trying to trivialize this change, but what would you guys do on an external website?  For add, there's a signup process.  Basically, you register a user account, get some data from that user, and now you have an identifier for this user to point to that data and do what you want.  Think of Facebook as streamlining the first two for you.  When a user first visits your app, assume its a new user.  I'm unsure why the "add" concept is supremely necessary.  You have a user visiting your site who you haven't seen before = do something new.  For post-remove, again, external site.  Not everyone will deactivate accounts at websites.  So at some point, you'll have to assume they're not using it any more.  You'll notice, for example, Facebook reports "active users" and not "registered accounts".  Building out monitoring tools will allow you to track progress as well as figure out who is active and who should be considered deactivated at some point in time.  Good luck!

Starfish, I was simply saying that the paradigm of "unregistered" = "inactive" is nothing new and was not suggesting that you develop for the open web. 

I feel there is a very limited subset of applications that, in their current incarnation, really require add to function.  I don't think the we want user confusion.  That's why this change will be rolled out very slowly to get some good iterations in.

Facebook is not an external website. I would say a huge number of applications are still useful to users even when they are not interacting. Users of my IQ test only take the test once, but then they want to display the score on their profile forever. They are still an installed user if they are displaying the score, and the application may still have legitimate reason to interact with them, for example if a new, improved test becomes available. This could still be the case years after the user last clicked on the application. What about 'quotes' applications? The user reads the new quote every day, so do some of their friends, so they are an active user, but they never have a reason to click on the application or visit the canvas. If they get bored of the app, they may then choose to remove at. At that point the app needs to know they have removed it. For a start, how can you value an app if you don't know how many people are still using it? How do you know which UIDs to update the profile box for if you don't know when someone installs or uninstalls the app?

chrisclaydon wrote:

Users of my IQ test only take the test once, but then they want to display the score on their profile forever. They are still an installed user if they are displaying the score, and the application may still have legitimate reason to interact with them,

From a user standpoint, I could not agree more. I have apps on my profile that I have not logged in to in ages, but I keep them on my profile to display what they show.

Ffoeg wrote:

I'm just going to run the more complex apps in an iframe and display a "Please wait while I grok your data" message and make thousands of API calls for every single page hit.

Sparky does that, and it drives me nuts. I can imagine things like that being rough on FB's API too.... quite a few API calls.

Collin1000 wrote:

Sparky does that, and it drives me nuts. I can imagine things like that being rough on FB's API too.... quite a few API calls.

Ya imagine a user who has a few thousand friends who have been on FB for a long time.

Now imagine grabbing all the groups that they are all in.

I wrote an app like that but I didn't publish it because it was too slow. I was going to use the FB data store API to store it for a day at a time to make subsequent page hits faster but I couldn't quite get it into my head how to use it as a database table.

I sure don't want hits like that on my database at home here, I am only running a single box so I ended up turfing it.

And also when people add these things.

That way we could still tell what's going on with a user, not to mention get some real nice stats about what parts of the app people like and which are just annoying them!

Why is everyone talking about 'getting rid of adding apps' .. From the way I read the post about the changes, it sounds like an application will just ask a user to log in the first time a user accesses an application instead of an install (I'm also thinking this only applies to the 'require install' and 'require login' functions and not if a user goes to your page and selects "install".. I could be wrong about this though, facebook?) .. I've been happy with just about every change facebook has been introducing. I understand where people are frustrated, but I feel like just about everything that's changed is going to promote developers to create applications that don't suck or users won't 'add' them after they log in to them.. I try and make as many pages as possible accessible to any user without even logging in to my applications..

The way I see it. Your application needs some information from the user the first time they access your app, so they are asked to log in. Your application adds a couple checks to see if the user is just logged in or they have installed the application and a banner on the top of the application tells them, "play around with this app and have fun! If you like what you see and want to access all of it's features and add it to various places on your profile, check 'here' to INSTALL the application" ..

This means end users won't be 'tricked' to install applications just because they blindly clicked the Install button because one of their friends sent them an invite (more than likely because they HAD to send 15 invites in order to do something special with the application) .. With these changes, the end user will log in and actually get a taste of what the application does before they choose to install it.

I agree that this isn't the most developer-centric decision that's been made, but i also agree that it does help out end users and forces developers to create more meaningful applications that don't rely on 'tricking' users to install them and then invite 20 of their friends.

Congrats everyone, the one person from FB who replied to this topic has chosen not to comment any further. Perhaps we can stop the bashing and have a more peaceful discussion as to alternatives or lay out our feeling to facebook more clearly?

From IRC, Off topic and login messages pruned out.

14:46    JSeligstein: I'm not going to respod to anyone who says this to me for no reason: "I doubt that either you are absolutely confused or are astonishingly blinded and uneducated. You, my friend, are dumb. I also doubt that you have better ways to show us why this step is taken. Please explain the fanatical mindset you possess that characterizes so much damage that you are doing."

14:48    Collin1000: Would you mind any comment on the FB side of the story, as to why this move seems approiate? The developers seem left in the dark here, and perhaps if we knew the reason for this move we (I, at least) may understand.

14:49    JSeligstein: at this point, I really don't care... if you know me or have ever spoken to me, youd know I'm the biggest advocate with developers. I was going to attempt to engage in more discussions, but now I won't.

14:50    JSeligstein I do not make the decisions, I am not coding on the new section, and I echo any concerns I ever hear. Blasting me for hopping is disucssions is very dumb.

14:50    JSeligstein: it neither appropriate nor correct to assume my position or opinion is official

14:51    Collin1000: Im not the one attempting to blast you or FB for anything here, but you are right now the only contact we have gotten this entire time on the issue. Therefor, you were the only method of us voicing our so far unheard issues. If a marketing person had come along, we would have blasted them as well.

14:52    JSeligstein: and hence why I will not post on the discussion board again.

14:52    Collin1000: I am just here looking for some type of comment as to the reasoning for the add vs. install really, but thank you for sharing your opinions while you could.

14:52    JSeligstein: I'm not even on platform anymore, my friend.

14:53    JSeligstein: I come to the board and here on my own accord [and always have]... and not part of my job.

14:53    JSeligstein: As a human, I now refuse to subject myself to that kind of blantant abuse for no reason. I hopped in to chit chat and discuss and got lambasted. NO thanks.

Let us be reminded that facebook employees are not the ones making the new rules all the time, some things come from higher ups. And our only so far method of contacting those has chosen to leave.

aritude, no I am not.  I am a Facebook engineer who has posted here in cycles: I get active, then get yelled at for something I didn't do or have no control over, and then I leave when it gets overly cumbersome to do my real job.  I have worked on platform in the past, and was a developer when the first version of platform came out (August 2006).  I'm working on apps myself, was previously an app developer, and have worked on platform.  I have a very strong tie to this community.  I occasionally go to app meetups, support local garages when I can, and speak at some conferences and classroom sessions.  I tend to work on features that really help get apps going: fb:comments, fb:board, DataStoreAdmin, etc and not the other features of platform.

In short, I am not official nor am I paid to post here or in IRC.  I came to chat.