Not sure how PubSubHubbub fits into the world, since I haven’t used it yet. But given the description at Techcrunch, I think I might have to. Wonder if we can somehow work its functionality into spredfast…
So InsideFacebook and Allfacebook.com are continuing to tout facebook’s growth and in some cases the relative stability of monthly active users for social applications as evidence that the new redesign has only meant good things for app developers, facebook, and the world in general. However, as I have mentioned before, the only applications which have benefitted from these changes are the quiz apps which I guess were already making great use of the feed forms and LivingSocial which keeps making people fill out little lists (not actually all that different from the chain letter demanding 25 things about me). Great. Those apps are just wonderful.
Meanwhile, I have searched high and low for comment about app/widget developers Slide and RockYou and I haven’t seen anything since this latest redesign. The AllFacebook blog actually had a post that does mention that their apps have declined significantly in monthly active users (MAU), but then they go on to claim that since MAU across all apps are flat since the redesign, then the redesign didn’t really hurt app developers. But come on – how many more lists can I make on Facebook and give a damn? I’ll say it, since no one else seems to on the internets these days: Slide and RockYou are screwed. Kiss the $100M+ VC money in them good bye.
Facebook’s recent redesign also resulted in a number of changes to the ways applications interact with the Stream and how Fan Pages are now Pages (who does this product marketing? Dave Morin? Sorry, but this nomenclature is really difficult for the rest of the world. You know what the first thing people see when they go to www.socialagency.com? Our home PAGE. Then they navigate to other PAGES. Interestingly, the web had this system of calling everything PAGES for a few years before Facebook came along and started calling business profile listings in their system PAGES. OK – end rant. Jackasses. OK – really end rant). Now applications can’t put items into the Stream (which used to be the newsfeed which kind of exists but no one sees it…uh-oh, feel another rant coming on…holding back) without direct user interaction. E.g. to put a story on the Stream, the app must pop up a dialog which specifically asks the user to place the story. Now some might think this is better b/c now every user action that makes it to the Stream has been explicitly authorized to be there by the user. But from an application developer’s perspective, it is miserable. In the past, an application could post to the newsfeed after the user took some sort of interesting action on the app, but did not have to put a glaring popup in the user’s face. Those actions could have occurred in a variety of places in the use of the app. In my view, this change will result in 1) a gradual decline in the number of apps able to make use of forcing users to send messages to the stream, 2) more users blocking more apps from their stream entirely, 3) a reduction in meaningful app usage overall on Facebook. If the only apps that are successful are the ones that constantly exhort the user to post to their stream, and those are largely characterized as list builders and quiz apps, then fewer and fewer people will take them over time – they will just get boring (at least I hope so, b/c I really don’t care what rock band from the eighties you are – no, really I don’t – don’t do it, don’t post the results of that quiz to your stream – don’t). Ah, this post is too long now, so I don’t have room or time at the moment to get into all my thoughts on the Fan Pages -> PAGES (I have more than the screaming above), so I’ll post again shortly.
We haven’t said much about the Facebook redesign and the other changes in functionality. In short, I don’t care for the redesign. I get Twitter and the need for people to broadcast inanities at all hours of the day (I know, Twitter can be used for much more than that). But I just don’t/didn’t use Facebook in that way. Seeing what an acquaintance ate for breakfast this morning simply doesn’t start my day off the right way. I forget where I saw it, but Facebook makes a very good CRM for your friends. Great way to keep up, see the major events in people’s lives, offer condolences when warranted. And I would be willing to stay on all day to occasionally stumble upon such info. But I always found the statuses to be the least compelling aspect of the site. Now they are the most prominent. I know that Facebook has introduced all sorts of filters to block unwanted Stream spam, but frankly, since they introduced the spam to me (unlike Twitter where I have done it to myself) I am a little pissed that I have to go create a whole bunch of filters – which will likely mean that I will eventually miss one of those big life events that I was using Facebook to stay abreast of in the first place.
I think it is great for Facebook to move fast and innovate – they have to in order to make sure they don’t get eclipsed by some other service just as they overtook MySpace. But as nature shows us, not every evolutionary change is a positive one. This one is bad.
I am not the only one who has reacted this way. The following sites had plenty to say:
Facebook Haters reach a million strong
Top 10 Missing features of facebook redesign
Facebook goof cripples controversial homepage poll
There were many, many more where those came from.
So in the post below, you will see our first foray into the world of “Social Shows.” This serialized drama is going out to all parts of the web world:
What we have here is a prime example of what we call 360 degree marketing; the makers of this show are reaching their customers in every way possible, while bringing them a content rich and exciting new experience.
One of the interesting parts of developing social applications is that the platforms and technologies we interact with are periodically changing, and we must keep pace both with our platform and with our application marketing strategies.
Facebook recently completed a fundamental redesign of much of its site. Transitions on such a big platform are always painful, and a portion of the Facebook user base was vocal in their opposition (and were covered widely in the media). Nevertheless, the new Facebook is now fully implemented, and we are starting to see the application ecosystem adapt to the new restrictions and features.
The biggest change from the application point of view is the fact that most of the profile boxes that were the prime source of application virality have been pushed onto a rarely-visited tab of the profile. Previously, going to a friend’s profile displayed all the boxes from their various applications, and users tended to discover new applications by seeing cool things on their friends’ profiles. This meant that the most successful applications were those that made the user say “I want that” when seeing the profile box on their friend’s profile. Of course, this led to a competition over profile real estate from applications, and a top user complaint about the old Facebook was that the profile pages were crowded and difficult to use. The new Facebook has made the profile box irrelevant for most apps.
The new profile page is centered around a feed of user activities on Facebook and its applications. This means that the way a user discovers a new application is by seeing an action by one of their friends and saying “I want to do that”. The feed is the central interface for Facebook, and much of the social interaction a user has now on Facebook is to consume new feed entries created by their friends.
So, what does a current successful Facebook app look like? It invites meaningful and frequent user interaction, and posts these interactions to the user’s feed. Users can discuss feed entries in the feed itself, so a successful app’s feed entries invite conversations between users. Additionally, the new Publisher interface lets applications integrate completely into the feed interface, letting users compose entries from their home page with an application-defined interface, lowering the barrier to creating a new entry.
In a future post, we’ll look at what makes a successful MySpace app and what an app needs to do in order to succeed in both worlds.