Mark Your Calendars: Planning for Facebook’s Platform Changes Over the Next Three Months
For all the product managers and engineers out there, yesterday’s Facebook Platform roadmap announcements were a mixed blessing: on one hand, it’s fantastic to have a relatively cohesive picture of what’s coming in the next few months for the first time. On the other, there are a lot of changes coming, the specific consequences of many of which are unknown, and there’s a ton of work to do as a result.
So in case you missed one of the 19 specific announcements Facebook made yesterday, here’s your calendar of upcoming Platform changes, based on Facebook’s Developer Roadmap:
Late October 2009
1. Simplified policies posted, verification program ended, and “extending verification standards to all applications”
2. Platform Live Status tool launching, which will show “updates on platform stability and load”
November 2009
3. New email permission API (developers can ask users to share their email address)
4. Access point to invites will be moved “to either a filter in Inbox or surfaced in the Application and Games Dashboards”
5. User-to-user Inbox APIs will be launched
6. Stream story formatting changes (1 image shown by default, few lines of text, 1 action link)
7. New “add bookmark” button
November/December 2009
8. Notifications API (both app-to-user and user-to-user) will be removed (note: Facebook says this will happen “30 days after email permission is available”)
9. Feed forms cannot be popped open without “explicit user intent” (note: this is a new Facebook policy)
10. Application bookmarks moving from the bottom menu bar to the left side of the home page
11. Counter API launching (counts can appear on home page application bookmarks)
12. Applications and Games dashboards launching
13. New application branding on canvas pages launching
December 2009
14. All stream publishing APIs beside Stream.publish, Facebook.streamPublish, and FB.Connect.streamPublish will no longer be supported (this will happen on 20 December)
15. Revamped developer site launching
Late 2009 / Early 2010
16. Requests API will be removed (note: Facebook says this will happen “30 days after launching new Inbox sharing”)
17. Profile boxes will be removed (application tabs will be the only way to integrate into the profile page at that point)
18. Improved analytics and APIs launching
Early 2010
19. Open Graph API launching
October 29th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I think some of the changes are lose-lose. There are no gradations in the communications options. It’s either give an application your e-mail (and your actual e-mail at that, not a proxied e-mail) receive very little communication from them.
Why not have Application-Specific Streams that users could view from their regular Facebook Homepage (for Applications that they’ve bookmarked). Tie the Counter to this Stream. When something new is posted to the Application-Specific Stream, the Counter iterates up one, until you view the Stream.
Asking users to give out their e-mail addresses is a very permanent connection that can never be revoked (unless you abandon the e-mail account). I think having Facebook serving as an intermediary of sorts was not necessarily a bad thing. I think Facebook’s proposed solution will end up being more intrusive for users in the end.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
[...] Yesterday’s Developer Roadmap Event at Facebook was excellent – thanks again to the Facebook Executive and Platform teams for hosting us. The web is buzzing today with summaries and commentary on the technical plans they outlined – the most succinct of which can be found here. [...]
October 29th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Thanks Justin for putting the events in (planned implementation) chronological order which the Wiki omits [well puts it in random order sorted by the type of upcoming change]
October 30th, 2009 at 7:00 am
[...] information easier, bridging email and social media marketing opportunities in new ways. The API is scheduled to go live sometime in [...]
October 30th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
[...] I mentioned. They’ve introduced a new roadmap (there’s great overview of it with timelines on Inside Facebook). Overall I’m unsure exactly what the new plans they’ve laid out will mean for Facebook [...]
October 31st, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Some of the changes that Facebook is making, are only serving to piss people off. Why isn’t anyone mentioning that literally millions of Facebook people are joining groups in an attempt to GET RID of the new live news feed. People are threatening to leave Facebook.
Some changes are good, but the changes that Facebook made in October are ridiculous and most of the people on Facebook DO NOT WANT IT!!!!
NOT ALL CHANGE IS GOOD!!!
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:04 am
[...] Page fits into an overall News Feed plan. Now that notifications are going away soon (see the full calendar of upcoming platform changes here), Page updates will become the only in-Facebook app-to-user communication channel. (Developers can [...]
November 5th, 2009 at 5:04 am
[...] Mark Your Calendars: Planning for Facebook’s Platform Changes Over the Next Three Months For all the product managers and engineers out there, yesterday’s Facebook Platform roadmap announcements were a mixed blessing: on one hand, it’s fantastic to have a relatively cohesive picture of what’s coming in the next few months for the first time. On the other, there are a lot of changes coming, the specific consequences of many of which are unknown, and there’s a ton of work to do as a result. [...]
November 6th, 2009 at 1:48 am
Why get rid of notifications? They are good, I get a lot of comments, etc and I can never keep up with them unless I get a notification of it..
November 6th, 2009 at 1:55 am
Just a suggestion, but maybe you should Poll facebook users about how they feel about these changes. Everyone I know hates the changes so far, and I know no one will like the loss of notifications. We need those. That’s what I love about facebook, if someone comments me I get told, and I can look at it and reply in a couple of seconds, instead of refreshing, and rechecking to see if anyone has commented. You should poll the people who use facebook every day, make it as an Add on the side even, but I think if your trying to improve the website for Us, you should get our input.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
This is a total outrage for game developers. We have spent countless hours creating games for thousands of people. We have spent our money on advertising our games. We have players who have spent money directly to facebook in the offers section of the game creator platform as well as personal shops. When the games are pulled and the platform is shut down we will be facing lawsuits from people wanting their money back.
We have dealt with all the errors, we have dealt with no support for months and you guys come and say sorry.. we cant help you.. we are working on something better. Its total BS and you should buy bigger servers and hire a professional staff to get the original game creator application back on its feet before total chaos breaks out.
November 9th, 2009 at 8:20 am
[...] bigger issue, now, is that Facebook is introducing a wide range of changes to its developer platform, getting rid of notifications and other features that apps currently use to reach users. Playfish [...]
November 23rd, 2009 at 7:32 am
[...] (which at least are continuously highlighted till you click on them) are going away in the very near future, [...]
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:11 pm
[...] (which at least are continuously highlighted till you click on them) are going away in the very near future, [...]
November 24th, 2009 at 5:06 am
[...] Mark Your Calendars: Planning for Facebook’s Platform Changes Over the Next Three Months Kevin: A thorough rundown of changes coming up at Facebook. This is especially useful for developers creating applications for Facebook and any publisher who is using Facebook to help promote their content and engage with their audiences. (tags: socialmedia facebook development roadmap changes 2009 socialnetworking) [...]
November 25th, 2009 at 7:54 am
[...] by the end of the year Facebook is actually planning on moving Bookmarks from the footer to the left column allowing for more potential space to display bookmarks. In this image of the proposed design, [...]
December 10th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
[...] fought back with a roadmap of changes to help the core value of the platform, as well as a news feed that, for many users, caused links, [...]
December 11th, 2009 at 6:21 am
[...] fought back with a roadmap of changes to help the core value of the platform, as well as a news feed that, for many users, caused links, [...]