Webware

Facebook's Ethan Beard outlines what the company is up to in the next six months.

(Credit: CNET / Josh Lowensohn)

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Facebook on Wednesday took the wraps off its brand new development road map, unveiling changes and features the company is planning to implement within the next three to six months.

Many of the changes are smaller, simply rearrangements of certain parts of the user interface. However, the company is also making some radical moves like enforcing badly written applications and enabling developers to acquire user e-mail addresses as well as create Facebook-like sites outside of the social network's walls.

Ethan Beard, Facebook's director of platform marketing, who gave the presentation in Facebook's headquarters here, said that the one thing the company kept hearing from developers was that they needed to know what the company was working on ahead of time--and not just for short-term development, but a year down the line. "You want to know what's going on inside of Facebook," he said. "And today is to provide you with a lot more predictability."

That predictability revolves around the company's road map, which now sits on a new developer site. Beard says that it will remain updated with new items, planned changes, and APIs as they are announced. The company is also making publicly available a bug list, which will show developers problems with the site that Facebook is working on, as well as how they are being prioritized to be fixed.

The changes for users

The new user navigation menu takes place of the long bar that used to sit on the bottom of the page.

(Credit: Facebook)

So what are some of the big changes users will see? The first is that Facebook is doing away with many of the visual and organization changes it's made in the last two years. That includes the removal of the Windows Start bar-like app launcher and notification bar that sat at the bottom of the page. That's being moved over to the left side of the page where things like filters currently reside.

The new navigation bar will house new quick jumps to menus for both games and applications--something for which Facebook is making a notable distinction. Both will serve as a way for users to get a bird's-eye view of what's happening in games or the applications they've been using, as well as what their friends are up to. The company will also be making it easier for users to add third-party applications to the left side navigation bar with some new code that makes it a one-click affair.

Alongside the new left side navigation Facebook is also trying to make more of a distinction between notifications that are from apps and those that are sent from other users. This change involves taking notifications out of the sometimes-dreaded notification box (which will be soon be getting the ax) and giving developers a new way to notify users with alert badges that pop up as counters. And for notifications that are sent from other users, these will soon be found in users' Facebook in-boxes instead.

The changes for developers

One of the biggest upcoming changes for developers deals with Facebook's level of user privacy protection. The company will be letting users give app developers their e-mail address. In return they can remove their own Facebook in-box from app notification equation. This also applies to Facebook Connect, so third-party companies that use it for log-ins can send important messages directly to a user's primary e-mail instead of their Facebook in-box where it might get lost.

The Connect program will also be joined by a new developer API called Open Graph that essentially lets site owners create a page on any Web site that has the same features as one of Facebook's fan pages. These will allow users to sign up to be a fan with their Facebook credentials and use parts of the site as if they were on Facebook proper. In turn, their actions will be able to show up on their Facebook profile and news feeds. Beard said that the Open Graph API is simply a continuation of the move to add Facebook objects as well as people to third-party sites. "The graph does not necessarily have to exist in facebook," he said. "It can also live on the Web."

Facebook is improving its analytics with a new system that developers can use with third-party analytics tools.

(Credit: CNET / Josh Lowensohn)

Fan pages are not the only thing to escape Facebook's walled garden though. Beard outlined the company's plans to offer developers a way to view a deeper level of analytics for their apps. The reports, which Beard says are much better than the Facebook's current Insight system, will be able to be sent to third-party analytics engines where they can be stacked up alongside performance metrics Facebook wouldn't have otherwise been able to provide.

Keeping bad developers out

Besides some cosmetic and back-end changes, Facebook is also stepping up how it handles developers and applications that don't conform to the site's rules and regulations. Part of that is simplifying its platform policies from 14 pages to just three. Beard says the extraneous language has been cut down, so that hopefully more people will read it.

In addition to policy, Facebook is doing away with its six-month-old verified apps program in place of verifying every single app that passes a certain use threshold. This means that Facebook is going to be evaluating every app on its service to make sure it meets the company's guidelines and getting rid of ones that might have otherwise flown under the radar.

Other tidbits

•  Facebook canvas pages are now getting a special blue bar on top that removes much of the Facebook branding and user interface. Beard said that the move was largely to help developers make their canvas pages more immersive.
•  Profile boxes will be disappearing, and tabs will be slightly more narrow.
•  The new Facebook games tab may implement leader boards
•  Facebook is reworking its friends selector so that when a user is picking friends to invite or send a message, it will let them use the same filters they use to group their friends. Facebook is also working on a way to suggest a shortlist of users based on recent, or overall activity.
•  Developers will be getting a live view into the Facebook Platform status. This is kind of like Twitter's status blog and will show all known problems as well as how hard Facebook's APIs are being hit.

More information about the new developer APIs can be found on Facebook's developer site.

A recent simplification of Facebook's user privacy controls wasn't enough for some policymakers.

On Thursday, in conjunction with the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, Facebook announced a new set of modifications to its user privacy controls as well as its developer API, and the targets of these changes are the thousands of third-party applications built on Facebook's developer platform. That means there may be major implications for developers--some of whom rely almost exclusively on Facebook activity as a revenue source.

The Canadian Privacy Commissioner's office released a set of recommendations for Facebook last month, specifically highlighting concerns that third-party applications could access a significant amount of users' personal data. "It's clear that privacy issues are top of mind for Facebook, and yet we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates," commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said in a release at the time.

Facebook's newest set of changes will require third-party applications to specify which fields of user data they access (birthdays, favorite music, geographic location, etc.) and will require users to offer explicit permission before an app can access any of their friends' profile data. This is also in tune with recommendations offered earlier this week by a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which highlighted the amount of personal data that third-party apps can access--sometimes without a user knowing it.

"Our productive and constructive dialogue with the Commissioner's office has given us an opportunity to improve our policies and practices in a way that will provide even greater transparency and control for Facebook users," Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president of global communications and public policy, said in a release Thursday. "We believe that these changes are not only great for our users and address all of the Commissioners' outstanding concerns, but they also set a new standard for the industry."

But what does it mean for developers? This could make it difficult for some apps--particularly the sillier ones that rely on heavy viral spread and often one-time use--to gain traction and stay effective. These are similar concerns to those that arose when Facebook cracked down on apps that it deemed "spammy" (and often rightfully so). But on the other hand, the new privacy controls could stem off bad press that could easily paint the developer platform as a whole as unsafe or untrustworthy.

"It is important for developers to have access to information, but we want to balance that with transparency and control for users," Ethan Beard, Facebook's director of platform product marketing, said in a blog post geared toward developers.

"We have committed to making these enhancements over the next twelve months, and anticipate a lengthy beta period including opportunities for you to provide input, multiple blog posts, and updated documentation delivered well ahead of time," Beard's post continued. "Understanding that this will likely require modifications to your code base, we want to give you the earliest heads up that these enhancements are on our road map."

The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has put out a campaign designed to raise awareness of the privacy implications of Facebook's developer platform. It's focusing specifically on the popular "quiz" applications, like "Which Cocktail Best Suits Your Personality?" and "Which Wes Anderson Movie Character Are You?" These are largely one-time-use apps that many a Facebook user clicks on and tries out with little concern.

According to the ACLU chapter, "millions of people on Facebook who use third-party applications on the site, including the popular quizzes, do not realize the extent to which developers of quizzes and other applications have access to personal information. Facebook's default privacy settings allow nearly unfettered access to a user's profile information, including religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation, photos, events, notes, wall posts, and groups." For the promotion, it's put together a quiz about how much you know about Facebook-based quizzes.

Side note: Creating a Facebook quiz app to draw attention to the pratfalls of Facebook quiz apps is very meta.

"It's time for Facebook to upgrade its privacy controls so that quizzes can only see what people want them to see," Chris Conley, technology and civil liberties fellow at the ACLU of Northern California, said in a release. "Users need stronger protections than Facebook currently provides."

So are the ACLU-NC's claims legitimate? The most damning one asserts that "regardless of whether a user's Facebook profile is 'private,' by taking a quiz the user allows its developer to gain access to the user's profile information...by Facebook default, every time one of a user's friends takes a quiz, the quiz has access to that user's profile information." That could have particularly alarming security implications if an app turns out to be malicious.

Facebook does not deny this, but notes that "sensitive" information like contact details are not available to third-party apps, and that Facebook has settings for users to tweak exactly how much their friends' apps can see.

Last month, the company modified its privacy settings to make them more user-friendly.

The ACLU chapter recommends that Facebook make it an opt-in, rather than opt-out process for apps to access a user's friends' data and require that apps list the specific profile data fields that they will be accessing.

"We generally agree with (the ACLU's) recommendations and have already made public announcements about relevant changes that are under way," Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail. "Specifically, we recently disabled hundreds of applications, including quiz applications, that were inconsistent with Facebook Platform policies...We've also had productive discussions with the Canadian Privacy Commissioner about improving user data controls on Platform. We'd be glad to also have productive discussions with the ACLU and generally catch them up, if they want to give us a call."

The office of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, which has taken issue with Facebook's privacy policies, is holding a press conference on Thursday to address the subject, and Facebook plans to hold a conference call with reporters in response.

PayPal, eBay's well established but aging mechanism for online payments, is trying to rebuild itself for a new generation of online commerce possibilities.

At an event for press and developers on Thursday, PayPal and its partners described several new programming interfaces that are part of the company's upcoming Adaptive Payments Service and showed what developers can do with them.

For example, Microsoft will use the interface to enable payments within its forthcoming Azure cloud-computing service. And LiveOps' on-demand outsourcing service will use it to automatically handle fluctuating payment amounts and changes to who's being paid. Finally, the interface takes PayPal beyond the browser, opening it up for use on mobile phones, set-top boxes, and other increasingly smart devices.

"It's truly disruptive," said PayPal CEO Scott Thompson at the event. "It puts developers in the driver's seat by allowing you to do what you want to do and (choose) how you want to get paid."

The new service will be available to 300 PayPal partners starting Thursday, with a public beta this November--just in time for PayPal X Innovate 2009, its first developer conference.

PayPal is pitching the Adaptive Payments platform to developers as a way to more easily build PayPal-powered payment options into their applications. It's also a more streamlined version of PayPal's existing program for letting businesses manage transactions between several different parties.

The new payments service is a key part in PayPal's plan to double its revenues within the next three years. Back in March, PayPal's president Scott Thompson promised as much, saying that by 2011, the company should be doing somewhere between $100-120 billion in annual payments. PayPal has also had a fire lit underneath it since Amazon rolled out its own online payments service around this time last year. It let users make online purchases using billing information that was stored on Amazon.com

PayPal isn't just central to eBay's future. It will eclipse the company's auction and commerce operations, the company says.

"PayPal is a business that will be bigger than eBay," eBay Chief Executive John Donahoe said Thursday at the Fortune Brainstorm conference.

PayPal is a force to be reckoned with. On average, more than $2,000 goes through PayPal every second of each day. It has 75 million active accounts, and it's available in 190 markets and 19 different currencies.

Beta testing

Before the announcement, PayPal had been working with a handful of companies to test the new APIs (application programming interfaces). One of those companies is Microsoft, which is tapping PayPal for online payments in the Web applications built for the company's upcoming Azure platform.

At the unveiling, Yousef Khalidi, a Microsoft distinguished engineer, demonstrated an application that integrated PayPal's payment and billing functionality. It took only two days to integrate it into the existing product, Khalidi said.

Khalidi said that Microsoft plans to offer a simple way to build PayPal's mechanism into hosted applications as part of Azure's full release later this year.

Microsoft probably had an easier time choosing PayPal for its payment service than some of the alternatives: Amazon Flexible Payment Services and Google Checkout both come from companies in direct competition with Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing service.

Michael Ivey, CEO and co-founder of TwitPay, also took the stage to show his company's use of the new PayPal API--specifically to let people pay multiple people at once.

"In one transaction, I'm paying four different people," he said. Before the new APIs, the service would require users to make each payment as its own transaction.

Sites already using the new API include: Webassist, GroupCard, Lottay, Rainfall of Envelopes, and MedPayOnline.com

"PayPal will help you get paid for your innovations--your business will become our business," Thompson told the developers. "We view you as our third set of customers."

New features

The new payment service has a handful of new features designed to make it easier for developers to make money with their applications and services.

Thompson said that even if developers were acting as an intermediary between the person sending the money and the recipient, they would now be able to take their cut of that transaction--just as PayPal does.

Part of getting that to happen involves a new API that lets developers create peer-to-peer and business-to-business money-sharing applications. They can now also split up payments into several transactions and let users authorize a payment after the transaction's been made. Those two mechanisms can speed purchasing, regardless of whether the buyer is ready to pay the full amount at the outset.

As part of the new platform, PayPal also is changing the way fees are charged. Application developers can choose to have the sender of the money, not just the recipient, pay the fee.

In addition, the fee rates can be changed based on the type of purchase, which should ease the chore of handling both high-value transactions and micropayments (transactions below $12) within the same application. As it stands today, PayPal currently requires sellers to have two different accounts open, one for bigger payments and another for micropayments--and each has different rates.

People use PayPal today through a Web interface, but a new API will bring PayPal to nontraditional computing platforms including mobile phones, set-top boxes, and gaming consoles. That's important, given that those devices increasingly are networked and have their own ecosystems of applications. And moving to a browser can be disruptive to a user who just wants to make a quick payment.

Using PayPal that way also means that a developer must build the necessary user interface, though. PayPal didn't provide specifics on that element of the new payments system.

Overall, Thompson said the new payment system will help PayPal keep pace with changes in technology and business.

"The pace of innovation is just staggering," he said. "And the next wave of innovation is poised to move that much faster. "

CNET News reporter Ina Fried contributed to this report.

Facebook posted a set of small announcements on its developer blog Wednesday, most notably a call for alpha testers for the virtual currency platform that it's finally launching after much speculation.

"We are currently conducting an alpha test in which select applications can accept Facebook Credits from users," the post wrote. "Our 250 million users can now buy Facebook Credits in 15 currencies and we believe that, as Facebook Credits become more broadly available on Platform, they will meaningfully improve developer monetization and provide a great experience for users."

Interested developers are encouraged to contact Facebook.

Facebook has also announced that developers who want to advertise the applications they have built to run on its platform, which it originally launched over two years ago, now have a new option. They can opt to target their ad to users who are (or aren't) connected to one of their applications already: to encourage existing users to try a new app from the same developer, for example, or to court totally new users.

New options for Facebook developers' ad targeting.

(Credit: Facebook)

Huge businesses have already been built atop the developer platform: in fact, some reliable assessments have concluded that, at least for now, the apps on the platform combined make more money than Facebook itself.

There are over 50,000 applications built on Facebook's platform, but the company isn't stopping there. It's continuing to support budding developers with its second annual FBFund app funding competition, with the first 25 of 50 finalists announced Monday. The rest will be announced soon.

The batch of finalists was announced in a post on the Facebook developer blog by Dave McClure of the Founders Fund, the longtime Facebook investor that has provided financial backing for the seed fund. McClure will also be running FBFund's inaugural incubator program this summer.

What's different from when Facebook first announced the seed fund is that in addition to Facebook Platform apps, the finalists also include sites that use the Facebook Connect login product and apps built using the new Facebook Connect for the iPhone. In total, there are 13 Connect sites, eight Platform apps, and four iPhone apps.

The decisions were made with the help of a "Developer Council" consisting of prominent members of the app development and investment space.

The winners, who will be announced soon, will receive up to a $100,000 investment as well as an invitation to participate in the incubator program in Facebook's hometown of Palo Alto, Calif., which starts in mid-June. Last year's FBFund developers stood a chance at winning up to $225,000 (in the form of grants rather than investments), but the incubator program is new for 2009.

Finalists include odd-job seeker RunMyErrand, iPhone photography game Paparazzi, and runners' networking and route-tracking site RunThere. A full list of the first 25 is here.

You'd think, based on what the blogosphere is saying about dual sets of numbers in Advertising Age and VentureBeat, that Facebook has a new reason to freak out about revenues. Namely, signs point to the fact that the third-party developer platform that Facebook launched two years ago now collectively makes more money than the social network itself.

Well, of course it does.

From some of the headlines, you'd think that it were some sort of Silicon Valley equivalent of humans creating robots that eventually outstrip them in intelligence. While it's sort of amusing to think about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg battling evil robots (cue up some Flaming Lips here), this actually should be a pretty unsurprising conclusion. Estimates indicate that the platform applications put together may make as much as $500 million in 2009, with the advertising-based Facebook pulling in $350 million to $500 million depending on who you ask. (It's a private company. They're allowed to answer that question with nothing more than sneaky smiles.)

Let's look at the latest (vague) figures. When Facebook announced the debut of its long-awaited "verified apps" program last week, the company said there are now more than 52,000 applications on the third-party developer platform--and counting. That's a lot. In other words, if the Facebook platform were a standalone business, I should certainly hope it would rake in a significant amount of money.

Granted, we'd have to crunch a lot of numbers and deal with a lot of variables in order to figure out the exact operating expenses and headcount of the platform. Some applications are created by lone developers living rent-free in a basement, whereas others are created by app development companies that employ dozens of people and pay hefty amounts of cash for office space in those trendy post-industrial lofts in dot-com-friendly neighborhoods.

It gets more complicated. Some apps are the Facebook-inhabiting arms of much bigger social media companies, or are branded advertising or marketing campaigns on behalf of corporations that otherwise have zilch to do with tech. Then there are the development firms, consultants, agencies, and countless investors who also have a stake in it. Facebook itself, last time we checked, still had fewer than 1,000 full-time employees.

Conclusion: I don't know how many people and companies can claim to be on the Facebook platform's payroll, but it's a lot. And considering the platform as a whole has been much more adventurous with revenue strategies than Facebook itself has, I should certainly hope it's been raking in the cash for some time now.

So then there's the assertion brought up by AdAge's Michael Learmonth, that Facebook is pretty much sitting on a goldmine here. Which brings back the evil-robot thinking. Once again, Facebook is dealing with a massive and extremely diverse set of individuals and companies here. Social games manufacturer Zynga may be rolling in cash, but there are loads of other apps on the platform that don't make a cent. Has Facebook let the platform get too big and too amorphous for it to wrangle decent revenues out of it? ("I'm sorry, Mark. I'm afraid I can't do that.")

Which is why there are two things to watch here. One is the rollout of Verified Apps, which may have some unannounced or even under-the-table benefits that Facebook hasn't hinted at yet. Facebook's key terms for Verified Apps acceptance are "trustworthy" and "meaningful." But I wouldn't be at all surprised if "can make money, and can help us do so, too" is an unspoken criterion. Verified Apps will give Facebook the opportunity to work closely with a much more uniform and manageable set of developers and companies who have already shown a decent degree of loyalty to the social network.

Second, there's Facebook's finally-coming-soon (or is it?) Holy Grail of revenues, which is either a virtual currency system for developers or a PayPal-like transaction platform, or maybe a bit of both. The latest signs indicate that Facebook will be expanding the "credits" system it uses for its in-house Gifts application to select developers. Beyond that, it's not clear how it will expand.

With both a potential monetization strategy in place, and a policy (Verified Apps) to keep it from turning into a free-for-all that could start eating up cash rather than pulling it in, Facebook is all set. Or, if you prefer the hyped-up version, it almost has the arsenal in place to take on those evil robots.

Facebook has announced a revamp of the way it lists and catalogs its directory of third-party developer applications, according to a post on its developer blog, and the most notable update is the debut of the "verified apps" program.

This was first announced in November. Basically, for a $375 fee, Facebook will review developer apps to make sure they fit security and transparency standards, and will award a graphic badge to apps that make the cut.

Security on Facebook has been making headlines in the past few weeks, in the wake of several prominent phishing attacks that have hit the social network. While most have been quickly mitigated, and most did not involve third-party apps, getting the verified apps system in place may help with some image issues for the massive social network.

"Ensuring that applications are trustworthy, meaningful (whether for entertainment or utility value), and easy to find is paramount to developer success, user engagement, and helping the ecosystem as whole to thrive," Facebook's Jerry Cain wrote in the blog post.

Verified apps are also ranked higher in the directory, which is a big deal considering it now contains more than 52,000 applications. The directory has also upgraded its category system so that you can find what you're looking for more easily.

This will all be rolling out in the next few weeks, Cain wrote.

Social-network creator Ning is letting those networks get even more customized: it's unveiled Ning Apps, the company's full plunge into the developer platform craze. It goes into private beta on Thursday and will launch in full later in May.

This announcement is a long time coming, as Ning launched a limited application gallery in October--and that was still nearly a year after it was among the original launch partners for the OpenSocial developer application consortium.

There are a couple of things that make Ning Apps different from the social platforms found on the likes of Facebook or MySpace. While the earlier, limited array of apps offered on Ning was strictly for members to embed on their profiles, the formal Ning Apps product is geared toward the creators and administrators of Ning social networks. They can add an application--from a cash donation widget for a nonprofit network, to a ticket sales app for a band's fan page, to a live video stream of what-have-you--and it'll mesh right into the social network.

"A Ning network creator selects one of these apps, that functions basically like a full-fledged feature on the social network, and by choosing to install an app the app has a presence on the front page of the social network," Jason Rosenthal, Ning's senior vice president of business operations, told CNET News. "It gets a dedicated tab within a social network, and perhaps most interestingly, by default the app is installed on every (member's) profile page of that social network."

Ning, co-founded by Silicon Valley notable Marc Andreessen, doesn't yet make any extra revenue off Ning Apps, even though the possibility is there for the social network to take a cut of financial transactions or ad revenue. "It does open an interesting new monetization opportunity for us," Rosenthal said, "but not today."

The company announced last month that 1 million social networks had been created on its platform.