Facebook Announces Important Policy Changes for Developers

July 23rd, 2008

By Justin Smith

On the eve of f8, Facebook’s Paul Jeffries announced yesterday updates to Facebook’s Platform policies. As developers are aware by now, it’s important to be up to date on what Facebook considers acceptable application behavior.

Here’s a summary of the new policies:

Applications are no longer allowed to “create artificial or inappropriate incentives to use Facebook features (including, for example, sending requests and adding profile boxes)”
Developers “should not intrude on the user’s experience by prompting for a permission [to integrate into a user's profile] if doing so isn’t appropriate in the natural flow of events”
Developer ads are not allowed to appear “on the newly launched features that deeply integrate into profiles (tabs, Publisher, and application info sections),” just as they’re not allowed to appear on the profile box today
Notifications and feed items “should be timely, accurate, informative, valuable, non-deceptive, and anticipated by the sender. They can contain calls to action, which are sometimes great ways to stimulate engagement and sharing of information. But to do that, they must be on-topic, oriented towards the user’s interest, and non-spammy.”

The policy regarding ads on “newly launched features” goes into effect at 12:00pm PT on July 28, while all other new policies go into effect at 12:00pm PT on August 11.

Clearly Facebook is taking a more aggressive stance to curb application spam by cutting down on unwanted profile integration and use of Facebook communication channels. The challenge, of course, is going to be enforcing these inherently subjective policies to the vast variety of Facebook application behaviors and designs in a consistent way.

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13 Responses to “Facebook Announces Important Policy Changes for Developers”

Messmoguy Says:
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:28 am
I have Facebook account..it is really great but one more thing if you love facebook and you want to access it from anywhere then you need Messmo on your mobile.Messmo is free mobile software using which you can send SMSs to your friends for free and can also have much more fun !!!
FB developer Says:
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:17 am
Please give specific examples of prohibited messaging.
mobyguy Says:
July 24th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
I have used Messmo on my mobile…and accessing facebbok account using Messmo is really very easy..I like it ..:)
sneaky Says:
July 28th, 2008 at 12:14 am
The Messmo product certainly worked well – very low data, quick, and updated Facebook no problem. Tried

posting to Wall, changing status and sending messages. Good if you are on the move.
sneaky Says:
July 28th, 2008 at 12:14 am
The Messmo product certainly worked well – very low data, quick, and updated Facebook no problem. Tried posting to Wall, changing status and sending messages. Good if you are on the move.
daviddead Says:
July 29th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Get access to your Facebook account on messmo and never miss a notification, change your status, message your friends, post to your wall, and
upload photos.
mobyuser Says:
July 31st, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Please tell me something about how to access facebook using Messmo.
crazyone Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 12:37 am
I am not a big fan of social networking sites. I have successfully avoided creating a MySpace or Bebo account and until recently, I never intended joining Facebook either. Then I heard from an old school friend out of the blue and he suggested I join Facebook, so we could keep in touch that way and share photos – so I did. Since then, I have been on Facebook every day!
shekhar Says:
August 24th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Yes ..Facebook is really very interesting…It helped me to find my old friends
Boby Says:
October 8th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Facebook, for those that don’t know, is a friendship networking site, not unlike Friendster or MySpace. It began in the US and was, until fairly recently, restricted to students, but now anyone can join.
rajeshm Says:
October 25th, 2008 at 1:50 am
Facebook is rapidly becoming the Social Networking tool of choice for professionals – rapidly catching up on ..
shekharg Says:
October 29th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Are the privacy controls safe in facebook?
Any suggestions?
sherry Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Should you use Facebook for professional networking, and, if so, what is the best way to use it?