Comments on: For developers, the Facebook hype machine is slowing down

As one developer points out on his blog that platform activity is slowing, Facebook and the people making a living off it will have to adapt to a more crowded market.

[adasha76]

I see nothing bad in this - I hate the vast majority of Facebook apps. If it returned to a good way of keeping in touch with people and nothing more that would be a good thing in my book.

[behappy75]

I would love it if Facebook went back to being the way it was before all the applications took over. I go to facebook to connect with my friends old and new. Sometimes I get invitations to participate with my friends in different quizzes and such and I think "how cool"! So I participate but before I can post my results I have to invite 20 of my friends to use the application. WHAT!!!!!

I understand that these companies need us to spread their service by sending it to our friends but the thing is that I would be much more likely to spread the word about a certain application if I was just able to do it on my own instead of being forced to do so. That totally turns me off so I don't end up particpating at all.

And the quality of some of the applications and companies that are on Facebook are just sketchy at best. Some of them have you visit their own websites which are not quality websites and then once you add the application they send you false e-mails. Saying that people are looking at your profile when they aren't.

I know that Facebook has to make money, but I think this is absolutely the wrong way to do it! I know there is a way to stop the applications and I have adjusted my setting now to block them.

But I feel that the integrity that Facebook once had is fading. The fact is that people have so many other options when it comes to Social Networking. Just like Facebook invaded into MySpace territory another website will come invade Facebook's niche. Linkedin is already doing this....

[Kev Orng]

Oh, noes!!!11!!!one!!! The market for fluff crapplications is drying up! Does this mean that nobody will buy my new "Here's a dumb animated GIF so I don't have to compose an actual message" app that I just spent 8 months coding? Will nobody install my new "Dry hump me" app?

I keep hoping that someone will design an "auto-ignore" app for facebook that will automatically ignore all application and "join this group" requests, so you never have to see them. Then, it sends a customizable message to the sender saying more or less:

"Thanks for thinking of me with this app/group. Unfortunately, I have Auto-Ignore enabled. I would like to hear from you though, so please click here to just send a standard message. If you are certain that I will appreciate and/or benefit from this app or group, please use this tool to resend the invite and a message."

Then it will force the sender to include a minimum length message with the invite. So they have to explain why I need this. That oughta cut down the app requests to, oh, none or so.

sweet.

[nigelparry]

This was really interesting. For me, I think the developer fall off comes down to a number of things.

1. Facebook?s numbers are still growing. So it?s hardly ?dying?.

What makes Facebook good is not the Apps, but the combination of actual social networking features, specifically:

a) the friends connections (see all social networking sites)

b) hookups from the past through names and e-mail searches (see classmates.com)

c) article, link and event sharing (digg.com and evite.com?all together)

d) photo sharing (bar perhaps Flickr.com, but that?s all Flickr does) and visual tagging second to none (including Flickr) and the very cool camera phone image posting

e) the Twitter-like status updates.

f) a really well done e-mail system.

g) a really good regional component built in for events sharing and common interest hookups. Pages for businesses and bands are amazing.

All these key elements of social networking in one place and done so well? That?s not dying any time soon.

Plus it?s a far far nicer looking and a far far more user friendly system than MySpace or LinkedIn. Any other *new* social networking site just doesn?t have the 70 million plus members that Facebook has, which makes it worth joining. I keep getting surprised by how many people I know or knew are on here.

It remains that what?s good about Facebook is the basics. Showing the weather on your page isn?t really that critical to anyone because most people are using other things for that. Fortune cookies are fun but fluff in the end.

2. If apps development has fallen off, that?s most likely probably because people got sick of crap Zombie War-type and other useless applications that formed the vast majority of what was available and became spam like, especially the deceptive ones that included friend forwarding without you really getting it until it was too late. Good riddance.

3. With 70 million plus users, serious developers are of course going to continue to target Facebook?s members. But serious developers.

People love to announce a funeral and the media loves to report on that.

But there?s a million ways to skin the cat, and the developer quoted is looking at it through a meaningless statistical tunnel that relied on the prevalence of postings about crappy applications from crappy developers. He?s looking at it myopically from a non user standpoint.

Facebook is easily the most effective social networking site out there and makes MySpace?s painful user interface and lack of genuine social networking tools (eg. the regional stuff that is done really well on Facebook) look like a joke. Which is presumably why MySpace has been copying Facebook?s interface over the last 6 month? and badly.

Until Facebook?s numbers start plummeting, he?s really got nothing to say.

[Rádi Pál]

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[joe_dev]

we have stopped investing in FB... the platform is too opaque to figure out what it's doing with our viral channels of distribution. Hence users are too costly to obtain. Facebook's attempts to protect users from spammy apps have essentially also thrown out the baby with the bath water.

Meanwhile the large wall apps keep finding ways to get around FBs attempts to rein in the invite/notification spam, and FB comes down with more restrictions which just hurts the emerging apps.

So we're out... goodbye FB, we're taking our talent elsewhere. And then our existing 25,000 users with all their user gen'd content get pissed off cause their stuff is gone, then I will direct them to the Platform team for a shoulder to cry on.

[robertfalco]

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[robertfalco]

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