This week Facebook is expected to migrate all users to the redesigned version of the site, almost six months since the initial profile redesign announcement. Today, we look back on the three major stories that have arisen during this process: user backlash, app declines, and application bookmarking.

User complaints

Much like the introduction of the News Feed, the profile redesign has spurred significant user feedback and criticism. Some Facebook groups critical of the new design now have millions of members, and the backlash has even extended to the Facebook developers forum and comments on this very blog. Blogs and major news outfits alike have extensively covered both of the redesign, and the subsequent negative reactions.

Given that Facebook now claims over 100 million active users, the backlash has been relatively minimal. By gradually migrating to the new design, Facebook has successfully placated most users, though the slow roll-out has made development difficult for some app developers.

Anecdotal evidence of app declines

Along with the site redesign came the monthly active user metric, which has made comparative analysis of applications’ performance pre and post redesign challenging. Further complicating this analysis is the inclusion of tabbed views in the MAU metric, as before profile box views were not included in the reported DAUs. For the purposes of analysis, daily unique canvas page views is the best metric available for retroactive comparison.

With that being said, some developers have shared graphs (shown below) in the Facebook developer forums that suggest a downward trend for overall platform usage.

But in one developer forum thread, a Facebook representative posted the following in response to developers’ feedback:

Since the cut over began, aggregate Platform usage has continued to increase. The apps that have made the greatest effort to take advantage of the new integration opportunities are starting to see the positive results… Developers should continue to try out innovative ways to include the new integration channels and features in their applications. We acknowledge that applications that depended on traffic from certain features that are no longer available or prominent may see decreases if developers have not modified their applications to focus on the new ways of sharing and integrating into profiles.

It is too early to tell how the platform will ultimately be impacted by the site’s changes. The increased focus on feeds and the reduction of app clutter should benefit developers in the future, but in the near term the impact of these changes is still an unknown. While the general sentiment is that the changes have hurt applications, the fact that aggregate Platform usage continues to increase is an exceedingly positive sign.

Bookmarking and the application menu

The biggest change made to the new Facebook design in recent weeks was the application menu bar, which was introduced as a means of improving apps’ visibility, particularly after the removal of the left side-bar links. The introduction of the menu bar has significantly increased the importance of app bookmarking, which has become the platform’s primary means of app re-discovery. However, some have questioned the current implementation, especially the absence of a recently used section.

Conclusion

The profile redesign has been a delicate balancing act for Facebook, as even the slightest change can materially impact developers’ statistics and users’ contentedness. It remains to be seen if these changes ultimately will have a positive impact on the Platform, and if developers will be able to quickly adapt in the near future.

As we reported yesterday, Facebook has released a new Applications menu that significantly improves applications’ overall visibility in the new design. While the direct links in the shortcut bar and the menu itself have received much acclaim, the “Add bookmark” icon could prove to have the greatest material impact on developers.

Bookmarking an application is a relatively new behavior for users on Facebook, as previously the application sidebar was populated by links that were added during the initial installation process. Before the introduction of the application menu, some developers (and users alike) complained that the bookmarking process was too unclear. Now, the “add bookmark” icon is readily available to users, thus those complaints should largely disappear.

Gone from the prior Applications menu implementation (which used to be in the new design’s top nav) is the “Recently used” section, which used to sit above a user’s bookmarked applications. Now, the Applications menu exclusively features bookmarked applications. This change is subtle, but the impact could be substantial. For example, if a user were to “allow” a new application, she would need to bookmark it during her first session or possibly have no easy means of rediscovery in the future (other than recall). In most cases, that user is effectively lost as a potential repeat visitor if she didn’t click “add bookmark” during her first visit.

If developers were able to integrate the “add bookmark” functionality directly into their canvas page experiences this problem could largely be mitigated, though this implementation would lack the elegance and consistency of the icon in the menu bar. Alternatively, the “Recently Used” section could resurface either when the full Applications list is opened or in place of the application bookmarks in the homepage’s right column, which is essentially equivalent to the new menu bar.

While that is largely speculation, and the currently menu bar is likely to change, the issue is indicative of the reality of Platform: developers and companies can be seriously impacted by even the smallest of Facebook’s changes.

The web is becoming increasingly social, and new platforms are spurring that progression. We spoke with Shaun Connolly of Ringside Networks about their Social Application Server and their efforts to make the web – outside of major social networks like Facebook – more social.

Tell me a bit about Ringside. How did you get started?

The idea for the company germinated a little over a year ago from the premise that while currently there are a few major social networking hubs out there, many websites are going to want to tap into the social web for their business needs. One of our founders has a running shoe store and was looking for a way to engage the runners and create a vibrant community. By integrating a social application directly into his site, for example, he could make a much deeper connection than creating a group or application that runs on Facebook and add value to his existing customers.

For site owners, how is integrating with Facebook Connect different than integrating with Ringside?

We feel that what Facebook and Google are doing with Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect is really important. Basically what they’re doing makes our job kind of easier. These services make it easier for people to reach out and leverage their identities. Our focus however is a bit different, as we are intent on the creation of temporal, ad-hoc networks.

What are some key highlights of the Ringside Network?

Our initial focus as a company was around creating a social application platform that was compatible with the Facebook APIS. We aren’t focused on creating a service that is a simple install it and then you have a white label social network, so we don’t consider Ning or any of the other stand alone competitors white label creators to be competitors. Our social application service is a base infrastructure that is designed to federate your social footprint and apply that within the context of a particular website.

How difficult is it for an existing Facebook app to run on Ringside?

In some instances the integration is as easy as embedding in a widget. We’ve have other examples of full blown applications that have been built to run on other sites. We implemented a good chunk of the Facebook APIs, so you can have an application render itself normally on Facebook and still render on another web site.

What do you see as the core market need here?

Since we’ve been in business by necessity we’ve built up this open source platform. With the underlying platform in place, we build applications and widgets that leverage common social activities and interactions. Our implementation leverages the fact that users have built up their Facebook identities but the social graph manifests itself in these micro-networks. For the regular user the micro network arises, you do the social activity within the context of the site, and maybe a few months down the line that micro network disappears.

What is the status of the most recent beta release?

The platform has been built up over a variety of betas. We are focused on getting these cloud based services done. Sometime in September you will begin to see the manifestation of the platform technology. We will use that process to help us determine to go live date on the core platform. Our goal is for integration with the application server to be something as easy as dropping paypal into your site.

Are partners lined up already?

We have had a few sites deployed and active on earlier betas of the platform. We are in the process of reaching out to system integrators who are working with their customers on a variety of use cases in an  e-commerce context. They are looking to our platform as a means to build up this social graph across their own site.

For more information visit www.ringsidenetworks.com.

Unlike the early Facebook platform, the MySpace platform has undergone very controlled growth, as access to various viral channels has been slowly rolled out to application developers. Most recently, MySpace released their long awaited limited application invites offering. Given that in this relatively controlled environment most applications have thus far experienced “organic” growth, the relative popularity of certain application categories thus far is likely indicative of the platform’s future.

We’ve compiled a breakdown of the most popular application categories to date by adding up the total install numbers from the top 10 applications in each of the 23 application categories. Some major applications (mostly games) are counted in multiple categories, and this approach does ignore the long-tail of the application gallery. But generally the results are a fair assessment of the MySpace Platform’s early growth.

As you can see, only a few categories have reached widespread distribution on MySpace, while most have remained relatively small. Just how much MySpace will open additional communication channels for applications to grow remains to be seen.

Related Inside Facebook Resources:

• The Most Engaging Applications on Facebook
• Top 10 MySpace Apps after Day 1

Today, Facebook released their long anticipated replacement of “daily active users” with “monthly active users” on each application’s about page and in the application directory. The daily active user metric was often criticized for not being a fair assessment of engaging applications that saw frequent returning users.

While the broader monthly active user metric does not provide deep insight, it is a first step to addressing application engagement moreso than DAU. In addition, the monthly count should allow for quicker and easier comparison between applications that live solely in Facebook Platform versus those that live on the web at large.

Last week at Facebook’s f8 developer conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg formally announced Facebook Connect, Facebook’s new program that extends the Facebook Platform to any website that wants to integrate Facebook APIs for user authentication, sharing website content with friends, and publishing feed stories to generate traffic.

Here, Inside Facebook explains what steps webmasters need to tale to integrate Facebook Connect on your own website:

1. Authenticating Users

Facebook has provided a sample implementation of Facebook Connect that fully demonstrates the lightweight authentication process. Rather than mandate a standard login button for websites using Connect, Facebook is encouraging developers to create their own login buttons (you can also use the default).

When a user clicks the login button, one of three dialog boxes will appear:

• If a user isn’t logged into Facebook, the login/TOS popup dialog appears. If the user then authorizes Facebook Connect, Facebook gives a session for this user on your site and generates a callback to your site.
• If the user is logged into Facebook but hasn’t authorized Facebook Connect for your site, an AJAX dialog appears. After authorizing Connect, the dialog closes.
• If the user is logged in and has already authorized Connect for your site, Facebook generates a session for this user and provides a callback to your site.

2. Connecting Your Users’ Accounts with Facebook Accounts

Connecting accounts can be completed either when a user logs into Facebook from your site, or by accepting a Facebook Connect request from another already-connected friend.

When a user logs into your site, you can encourage that user to connect to her Facebook account by “calling connect.registerUsers, passing an email hash with it.” If the hash matches the user’s address on Facebook, Facebook will automatically return that “hash in the user’s email_hashes property.” This hash is then used as a key for merging your user’s account on your site and her account on Facebook. Once a user accepts, you can then determine which of that user’s friends are on your site.

Additionally, authorized users can generate Connect Requests for their friends, which appear alongside all other requests on the Facebook homepage. When a friend receives a request, that friend can visit your site, and can then return to Facebook to accept the request.

3. Publishing Feed Stories

Depending on a user’s login state and their authorization of Facebook Connect on your site, there are three possibilities:

• If the user has authorized Facebook connect and is logged in, you can publish one line stories automatically, or you can implement feed forms to allow your users to post short or full stories.
• If the user is logged into Facebook but has not authorized Connect on your site, an approval message will be displayed to the user when your site tries to publish a one line story. For other story sizes previews are displayed which the user can then approve.
• If the user is not logged in, nothing can be published.

Launch Timetable

After f8, the Facebook Connect sandbox opened for developers. It is slated for a late summer/fall launch. For more, see the Facebook Developers Wiki.

In the past month, many major application developers have been on the receiving end of policy enforcement measures handed down by Facebook. Here’s an update the current status of each application, including a look at the traffic repercussions of the measures taken.

Top Friends (Slide)

On June 26th, Top Friends was the first major app to disappear completely from the Facebook platform. The application was allegedly punished for violating the TOS by allowing access to non-friends’ personal information.

On July 5th, Top Friends resurfaced on the platform. Before the punishment, Top Friends users could use their profile box as a means to quickly access their friends’ profiles that they visited often. To bring the application in compliance with the TOS, this functionality was eliminated – now, clicking a “top friend” directs to that user’s Top Friends profile within the application.

Despite this loss of functionality and the long outage, Top Friends traffic has rebounded impressively.

Social Me and Compare Hotness (SocialHi.com)

July 1st, Social Me, a top 25 Facebook app, also disappeared from the platform. Compare Hotness, another SocialHi app, was also temporarily disabled.

An outpouring of support was seen for the Social Me app, even in the comments on this blog. On July 15th Social Me made its triumphant return to the platform, only to disappear again temporarily.

The app has now been available since the 16th, but has yet to recover its pre-July traffic levels.

Super Wall (RockYou!)

On July 6th, Super Wall’s traffic decreased rapidly. RockYou’s CTO and co-founder Jia Shen confirmed in an email that the app’s viral channels had been turned off for what he considered “slightly debatable” policy reasons.

Yesterday, Nick O’Neill interviewed Shen, who confirmed that Super Wall’s access to viral channels was back. It remains to be seen whether or not Super Wall can return to its position as the largest Facebook application.

(charts by Adonomics)

The looming Facebook profile redesign comes after over a year since the Platform’s launch. While no one knows exactly what will happen, some expect the changes to spur the development of new types of meaningful applications – while simultaneously stifling spammy applications that have plagued the platform.

In anticipation of this potential inflection point, Inside Facebook has categorized the top applications (those apps engaging over 5,000 daily active users) by category across the entire platform. We did this to compare the Platform economy today to where it might be in the future.

Of the 577 applications with over 5,000 daily active users, here’s how they break down:

I dealt with two main issues in my categorization efforts: 1) many apps are listed in the very generic “Just For Fun” category, and 2) many applications are listed under two categories. I handled these issues by placing the “Just For Fun” apps into other appropriate categories and selecting the most fitting category for applications with two assigned categories.

Though some of my assumptions in categorizing will skew the data somewhat, I believe the underlying trends are still meaningful. Clearly, Gaming reigns supreme across the platform, while the more utilitarian categories (utility, money, file sharing etc) have been largely neglected by both users and developers.

It will be interesting to see if the speculation around the development and growth of more functional applications will come to fruition in the post-redesign world.

While Slide’s Top Friends suspension has garnered a lot of developer attention, rival RockYou! faces an equally serious problem: Super Wall’s traffic has plummeted – fast.

Super Wall was until recently the most active application on the Facebook Platform, with well over 2.1 million daily active users. However, Super Wall has suffered a nearly 70% drop in daily traffic in the past week, falling to less than 650,000 DAU as of today.

The exact cause of the drop remains unclear. It could be partially due to the long holiday weekend in the United States, but other apps have not seen this type of drop. It seems quite possible that Facebook may have taken some kind of punitive action against the application, perhaps by restricting feed access or by lowering the application’s notification or invitation limits.

This traffic drop comes amidst the Facebook Platform policy team’s recent decisions to punish other major applications including Top Friends and Socialhi.com’s Social Me.

For developers trying to keep up with the dizzying pace of changes Facebook is making to the Facebook Platform APIs with the profile redesign, this article is for you. Here’s a quick tour of the major changes coming in the upcoming Facebook redesign and the essentials every Facebook Platform application developer needs to know.

Application Specific Tabs

At the top of the profile page there are now tabs on the profile page, instead of one long page. There are 3 tabs by defailt: Feed (which in the current design contains both feed items and wall posts), Info, and Photos. These three tabs cannot be deleted or renamed, but users can add additional tabs (up to 6) for applications of their choosing.

Application tabs can each feature one app and are 760 pixels wide. These tabs are essentially a mix between a canvas page and a profile box and offer users the opportunity to personalize their profiles by prominently featuring their favorite applications. Given that application tabs could become the most coveted real estate on the new user profiles, developers should work to provide a compelling tab experience for their existing users. In theory, the application tabs should disproportionately benefit the more engaging applications, but even for these “deeper” apps the benefits of the tabs could be somewhat impacted by the introduction of the boxes tab.

Application Boxes Tab

A Boxes tab is automatically added for users that either have more than 5 profile boxes or users with apps that don’t support main profile integration. The Boxes tab supports the existing fb:wide and fb:narrow dimensions, and is essentially a place for users’ app box “overflow.” Gone are the days of profiles littered with seemingly endless, useless profile boxes. The Boxes tab is a major step forward in the fight against profile clutter, but that improvement in user experience comes as a direct blow to application prominence on user profiles.

Narrow Column Profile Box

On the main profile (Feed and Info tabs), narrow profile boxes have a 200 pixel width and are limited in height to 250 pixels. When users switch to the new profile design, up to five of their existing profile boxes will be migrated to the main profile’s narrow column in a top-down fashion. Otherwise, application boxes can be added to the main profile when a user is on an app canvas page and clicks the “Add to Profile” button. This button will not appear on an app’s canvas page if the viewing user already has a box from that app on their main profile or box page.

Whereas today the narrow column is generally viewed as inferior placement, in the new design the left column becomes valuable real estate, particularly for apps that currently depend on the profile box for growth. Placement on the narrow column or as a distinct tab will effectively be the last foothold for app exposure on user profiles, as users’ excess profile boxes will be buried on the new boxes tab.

Application Info Sections

Another new integration point is the app info sections, which users can add via an “Add to Info” button on the application canvas pages. The Info tab features standard Facebook profile data (contact info, interests etc) in addition to structured information (text and/or images) provided by applications. App info sections are 540 pixels wide, and height is limited by number of items displayed or text length.

Facebook has long asserted that developers not fear Facebook encroaching on existing app niches and that instead applications would ultimately enhance existing, core Facebook features. By opening this integration point Facebook has finally given developers the opportunity to enhance a very central place where users build their personal profiles.

Publisher

The new publisher is essential – it’s the tool users use to post both on their friends’ feeds as well as their own. The publisher sits on top of user feeds and is the new medium for the sharing content, from wall posts to videos to app-created content. This feature streamlines the functionality of the existing Wall Attachment feature, while providing apps a new integration point directly into users’ activity feeds.

All applications that support this integration can appear in the list presented above the publisher, which will be sorted by default applications at first and later by most recent use, for users to create content. The publisher interface will be similar in appearance when viewing a friend’s page or the viewer’s own profile, but the content creation options and restrictions may change. Content created by the profile owner appears in the feed as a full story, while content created on friends’ profiles is represented by a short feed story that may be expanded.

The publisher integration is ideal for gifting apps as the publisher provides a light weight, direct means to quickly share content with friends.

New Feed Templates

In the most recent design iteration the wall and mini-feed are entirely merged into one Feed tab with filtering options. To complement the increased emphasis on the Feed tab feed stories now come in three different sizes (one line, short, and full) and can be resized by users directly. Profile owners have full control of their feeds’ presentation and can toggle between the three story sizes when available.

The one line and short sizes are largely unchanged, but the full size is a new opportunity for users to share deeper application content. Facebook will attempt to aggregate similar one line stories and similar short stories whenever possible.

Applications can automatically publish one line stories and some short stories without user approval in the owner’s mini-feed and friends’ News Feed. Additionally, apps can publish short and full stories with explicit user approval.

Summary

In conclusion, the Facebook redesign represents a paradigm shift in the ways Facebook Platform applications and Facebook profile pages interact. Developers hoping to survive the “shaking out” of applications that could occur with the redesign should take advantage of every possible point of integration on the profile in order to achieve maximum user growth and retention.