Inside Facebook

A couple more updates to report tonight…

1. New invitation limits much lower than expected

Facebook tonight announced that the new invitation allocation limits will be going into effect in the next two days. While this change was announced last week, new information we’re getting from developers points to this update being much harder on developers than previously expected.

When first reporting the change in app invitation limits, I said, “Assuming Facebook’s invitation limits are not on average significantly lower than the current fixed limit of 20, I imagine developers of quality applications will accept these changes.” It now looks like that first assumption is not the case.  Instead of the average number of allowed invitations per user per day staying at about 20 for most, most developers are seeing allocation limits of 8-12 invitations per day, with the highest reported number at just over 20. (What are your limits looking like?)

This change will likely have a big impact on the growth of applications in general - most significantly on those that rely heavily on invitations/requests. The most common complaint I’m hearing from top developers is that while this change definitely curtails the ability of low quality apps to spread, it doesn’t allow high quality apps enough channel access to thrive - instead, it punishes everyone. Hopefully, this change is just a stepping stone to a more optimized solution that offers greater reward for applications that foster high quality, high conversion invitations.

2. More prominent links for disabling application emails

Facebook also announced tonight that the application email template has changed such that the link that allows users to disable further application email contact now appears at the top of all application emails, instead of at the bottom like it currently does.

While not as significant a change as lower than expected invitation limits, this change will inevitably lead to a higher email unsubscribe rate than before, and for applications delivering quality emails, a poorer user experience.

Ultimately, Facebook faces a very difficult challenge in tweaking the Platform to always align its “user experience” priorities with developer priorities, when the behaviors demonstrated by app developers vary so widely. However, this week’s changes seem to have developers a little more worried than usual.

The Facebook Platform team will be pushing a few changes tonight around 10pm.  Updates to be aware of:

• Platform APIs now automatically return results in the language assigned to the country your server is in.  So if your server is in Spain, Facebook will now respond in Spanish (for example, the “sex” of a male becomes “masculino”). French and German will be added next, and Facebook will soon offer an optional parameter for you to choose the language you want your API results in.
• The multi-friend-selector now supports Friend Lists. This sounds like it could be an interesting new way for your app users to choose request recipients. (i.e. Business related applications might spread more quickly if many users have work-related friend lists and this change allows batch selection.) However, especially with the upcoming limits on the maximum number of requests per user per day applications are able to send, it’s not likely to mean your users will be able to send a flood of more requests.
• A Feed bug was fixed that was always using the plural case when using if-multiple-actors.

New Inside Facebook Top Jobs for February 27:

• Facebook Application Developer (Slide / San Francisco, CA)

As we mentioned yesterday, a big change coming up at Facebook this spring will be a revamping of the Profile page. While the implications of these changes for application developers are still unclear, Facebook today released the first screenshots of the new, tabbed, Profile page.

Facebook has divided the profile in these shots into “Wall”, “About”, and “Photos” tabs:

• The Wall tab contains what is currently called the Mini Feed, friends box, and application profile boxes. App profile boxes can now only appear in the narrow left column. Facebook has also hinted that applications will have a greater range of publishing options on the new “Wall.” Clearly, the new Facebook profile page favors communication and activity sharing.
• The About tab contains consolidated and rearranged Info fields, which tend to be more static. “About Me” now has its own section, at the top of the page.
• Interestingly, applications can also get tabs. The number of possible tabs that apps can use will probably be small, and how a user adds app tabs is not yet clear.

Update: Trey notes that the page is now wider as well.

After a spate of recent changes that have curtailed some developers’ Platform enthusiasm, Facebook this weekend hinted at upcoming changes to the Profile box that will make the profile box “simpler, more relevant, and provide users with a greater degree of control.”

While Facebook did not specify what the changes would mean exactly for Platform developers, it’s clear that developers will be affected. Facebook did say that applications that help users communicate more meaningfully, share more meaningful activity, and “increase user trust” will experience greater usage, while those that do not will experience trouble. Additionally, Facebook says it will give applications “more integration points within the profile so your applications fit more seamlessly into the Facebook user experience.”

What this means exactly remains to be seen. Clearly, Facebook is trying to tweak the design of the Platform to better align developer goals with its own.

Developers are hoping to hear some encouraging news. While recent changes have curtailed Platform abuse, they haven’t commensurately rewarded well-behaved applications. Hopefully, this update will allow those building good applications to achieve more success, instead of just adding more limitations.

New Inside Facebook Top Jobs for February 26:

• Software Developer for Social Platforms (RockYou! / San Mateo, CA)

New Inside Facebook Top Jobs for February 22:

• Software Developer (Birthday Alarm / San Franicsco, CA)
• Technical Sales Manager (Gratis Internet / Washington, DC)

A couple of outstanding conferences are coming up soon, so if you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, get them before they sell out!

Graphing Social Patterns - March 3-4 in San Diego

GSP West is coming up in only a couple weeks! Graphing Social is entirely devoted to “The Business & Technology of Social Platforms.” Day 1 will focus on business and marketing strategy, and day 2 will focus on app and technical strategy.

I’ll be moderating Tuesday’s session on Designing Viral Apps: Engineering the Viral Loop. The awesome panel consists of Andrew Chen, Blake Commagere (monsters apps), David Gentzel (SocialMedia), and Jia Shen (RockYou). Look forward to seeing you there.

Web 2.0 Expo - April 22-25 in San Francisco

Web 2.0 San Francisco is coming up soon. This year, Web 2.0 includes a Focus on Social Platforms track that will cover the state of the market, platform deep dives, application best practices, and key issues like privacy and data portability.

I’ll be moderating Wednesday’s session on Comparing Social Platforms. The panel will include David Recordon (Six Apart) and several others to be named soon. Should be a lot of fun!

SNAP Summit - March 25 in San Francisco

SNAP Summit 2.0 is coming up at the end of March. Dave Morin (Senior Platform Manager, Facebook) and Aber Whitcomb (CTO, MySpace), Jim Scheinman (EIR at CRV and co-founder of Bebo), Kevin Barenblatt ([context]), Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester), and a great list of speakers are lined up for the event.

Facebook tonight launched an upgrade to Pages that will be welcome news to businesses and marketers. It’s now easy to add custom Flash or HTML (FBML) to your Facebook Page.

In order to add Flash and FBML capabilities to your Page, install the “Flash Player” or “Static FBML” apps. Adding the Flash Player will allow you to upload your own Flash files to your page, while adding the Static FBML app will allow you to enter your own HTML. This will allow Pages to provide much more customized experiences.

In addition, Facebook added a Legal Drinking Age setting to Pages. If you operate a page related to alcohol products or bars, you can now meet legal drinking age requirements by editing your settings to only allow your page to be fully accessible by those over the legal drinking age where they live.

Finally, Facebook added the Photos module to Pages so that Page owners can allow fans to upload photos.

All in all, these changes make Pages a more comprehensive product for marketers reaching Facebook users through this channel. While apparently growing slowly, Pages will become an increasingly important marketing vehicle on Facebook over time - especially as the volume of fan-endorsed Social Ads continues to grow.

As you may already know, Facebook pushes new updates to the Platform almost every Tuesday night. Inside Facebook will cover every change to the Platform that’s relevant to developers and marketers. Yesterday’s release included the following updates:

• Facebook has now completely removed the actor_id parameter from feed.publishTemplatizedAction. Now, passing in an actor to templated feed items will have no effect. This means that “passive” feed items (feed items published for a user not actively causing the feed item to be sent) will no longer work correctly.
• Facebook added the ability to dynamically use the appropriate possessive pronouns in feed items according to a person’s gender.  This means that developers can now use “his” and “her” in feed items. For example, “{actor} updated <fb:pronoun uid=”actor” possessive=”true” useyou=”false”/> status.”