Earlier this week, we wrote that our #1 request for improving News Feed functionality was the need to publish application stories to friends who don’t have the given application installed. It appears that this is going to happen, at least in some scenarios, soon!

According to James Wang at Facebook,

For story templates that you register, you are given the option to expand the audience of the News Feed stories to users who have not yet added your application. (By default, an application’s stories can only show up in the News Feed of users who have added it.) The stories won’t start showing up in non-added users’ News Feed yet, but as soon as we roll out the new changes, the stories for templates that you have registered and designated for display to all users will be immediately eligible.

Facebook also says that by registering your template,

You will enable us to monitor how much users engage with your stories — this is data that we will soon be passing along to you in order to help you determine any changes you would like to make to improve your story quality. 

This is good news for application developers and users. For developers of highly engaging applications, the News Feed could now become a much more powerful channel for your application to reach new users. Great job, Facebook!
In addition, Facebook is taking the posture of providing increasing amounts of data to developers. This will help them design better, more useful applications.

[tags]newsfeed,template,viral[/tags]