Facebook Developers

Could you clarify the language about banning incentives?

Does this mean each and every app in which valid communication actions affect user standing are banned? That surely sounds like most if not all games that offer points for visiting, taking action, etc. Does this mean you are going to ban SuperPoke for giving points and increasing levels for sending pokes?

Are you guys pulling MySpace? Is the intent to kill gaming apps as a category?

There's lots of policies announced, but there are still dozens of spammy quiz apps that require invites to see results. Nothing ever happens to them.

Good job with banning incentivized notifications/invitations, I like the MySpace policy.

Edit: Also love this: "Content on Application tabs cannot include [...] promotion of other applications."

Last edited by David Stillwell (2008-07-21 15:45:27)

Facebook Platform Team wrote:

As is the case today with application profile boxes, advertising cannot appear on the newly launched features that deeply integrate into profiles (tabs, Publisher, and application info sections). Developers can continue to run advertising on canvas pages and monetize their applications in other ways.

There is a big difference between profile boxes and tabs, that is, profile boxes are loaded from facebook's servers while tabs are loaded form the developer's servers. It hardly seems fair that developers are not allowed to profit from pages that cost them money to render, while facebook will (I assume) be placing their own advertisements on the page.

Besides this, tab content is not visible to users unless they are clicked on. They are more like a framed canvas page than part of the profile.

There has to be an equitable solution to this. How about giving the option of having content cached like in a profile box or offering a revenue sharing system for facebook ads placed in tabs.

Maybe you could reconsider your stand on allowing developers to advertise in tabs.

I too am happy about all of these policies.  There are plenty of ways for social gaming to survive without incentivizing social actions.  Like, oh I don't know, maybe if people actually want to play the game with their friends?

bbn wrote:

I too am happy about all of these policies.  There are plenty of ways for social gaming to survive without incentivizing social actions.  Like, oh I don't know, maybe if people actually want to play the game with their friends?

Then what is the point of having Facebook in the mix when you have email address books?

I hope we would get an OFFICIAL RULING on SuperPoke approach and how these policies will be applied. These changes would probably affect most apps in Adonomics Top 20 or 50. Is the idea to whack them all? No?

bbn wrote:

Starfish Apps wrote:

Then what is the point of having Facebook in the mix when you have email address books?

Facebook provides all sorts of great viral facilitators that do a wonderful job WITHOUT NEEDING INCENTIVIZATION.  They are making it bad practice to incentivize the features, not to offer them.

Facebook loses value to developers the moment the distribution through incentivized email, OpenID (now supported by MySpace) or Google Connect becomes more effective then Facebook's own features hampered by excessive policy restrictions. We are either close to that point or already there.

If this conclusion is wrong, please prove your point with examples and metrics.

Last edited by Starfish Apps (2008-07-21 16:44:51)

Starfish Apps wrote:

Facebook loses value to developers the moment the distribution through incentivized email, OpenID (now supported by MySpace) or Google Connect becomes more effective then Facebook's own features hampered by excessive policy restrictions. We are either close to that point or already there.

If this conclusion is wrong, please prove your point with examples and metrics.

Your argument here hinges on the phrase "more effective," which means different things to different people.  Clearly for those focused on short term gains, it is most effective to allow a platform to be as spammy as possible.  But that type of short-term gain comes at the cost of long-term viability of the platform. 

I will gladly take short-term pain if it will strengthen the long-term viability of software I write for a platform.  I don't have any accurate metrics to share with you, but I think everyone can agree that Facebook users are tired of app-spaminess.   If these policies are followed I think we'll see a marked reduction in app-fatigue.

Starfish Apps wrote:

No metrics? The only objective way to assess success is through numbers.

Sure, but we're speculating on the future.  You can't measure that.

Starfish Apps wrote:

How about a few specific examples of "long-term" viable apps that do not optimize / incent viral channels.

My suite of sports-gaming apps had more than half a million users last year averaging about 50k active a day, and I didn't incent invitations.  I don't know if that's successful enough for you.

Starfish Apps wrote:

bbn wrote:

My suite of sports-gaming apps had more than half a million users last year averaging about 50k active a day, and I didn't incent invitations.  I don't know if that's successful enough for you.

The key words are "last year", "suite" and "less competition". Care to share recent numbers and app names?

Sure - the word "suite" was misleading, because it has only become a suite in the past six weeks.    I was a one-trick pony last year with Hockey only, and am expanding in the off-season into other sports markets (soccer and football, neither of which is in season).  The only sports app I had last year was called Hockey Pool.

I also have another app with > 100,000 users called "Friend of the Month".  Again, no incentivization, although that whole app is basically just an invitation screen. 

So, tit-for-tat: what are you developing, and why is incentivized spreading such an important tool in your kit?

Ben

@4
We want to enforce against all violators.  To help us do this please use the report links at the bottom of every canvas/About page.  If you have a list of apps violating policies you can also submit that to http://www.facebook.com/devhelp and we'll follow up.

@8
You make good points, and this is something we are taking really seriously and still considering.  We view these rules as the right starting point, but we plan to watch how tabs are used and viewed by users and hope to evolve this.  Thanks again for the feedback.

Thanks,

Facebook Platform Developer Operations & Support

If you are serious in banning incentivising invites, which i did not like though, then i have a query.

Some applications keep showing invite forms in app's homepage untill a user's invite count is 15(say). Is this forced invite, or incentivizing, or neither?

Last edited by tichwhack (2008-07-21 20:54:02)