Inside Facebook

A month after the Agarwalla brothers took Scrabulous offline in North America, Scrabulous has disappeared for Facebook users in the UK and Australia, and other locations around the world. The icon and link has been completely removed from bookmarks and the recently visited application list and, although a search for the game is still possible, the user is greeted by a page with the following message:

So - is Scrabulous gone for good, or will it be replaced by the less contentious Wordscraper in the near future as it was in the US and Canada?

Update: Jayant Agarwalla, one of the developers of Scrabulous, just issued the following statement:

Sometime on 22nd August, Facebook took the unfortunate decision to restrict most users from accessing Scrabulous. This was in response to Mattel sending them a “take down notice” on 14th August.

Mattel itself had approached the Indian Courts in February 2008, seeking an order for taking down Scrabulous from Facebook and other servers. The Hon’ble High Court has reserved judgment in this matter after hearing both parties. It surprises us that Mattel chose to direct Facebook to take down Scrabulous without waiting for the Hon’ble High Court’s decision. Mattel’s action speaks volumes about their business practices and respect for the judiciary.

It is even more astonishing that Facebook, which claims to be a fair and neutral party, took this step even though they were fully aware of the circumstances under which the Mattel letter was sent to them.

We now await the decision of the Hon’ble High Court and shall accordingly decide our future course of action with regard to Scrabulous.

We wish to thank our fans for their continued support and hope to give them the best results sooner than later.

Since the launch of the Facebook Platform, Facebook’s Platform Application Guidelines have expressly prohibited applications that promote the sale of alcohol:

I. Applications may not promote, or contain content (including any advertising content) referencing, facilitating, promoting or using, the following:

4. Sale of liquor, beer, wine, tobacco products, ammunition and/or firearms;

Today, Facebook announced that, with the launch of its Demographic Restrictions capability for application developers, that policy is changing.

Now, Facebook says it plans to allow application content that promotes the sale of alcohol, provided that developers “specifically use the Demographic Restrictions feature to restrict your application or content to users of appropriate legal age.”

Facebook is currently beta-testing the new Demographic Restrictions feature with a “very limited” set of companies, and the new policy should go into effect in September, barring any big hiccups in the beta test.

This is good news for applications like Booze Mail and Happy Hour, that allow users to send each other virtual drink gifts, as well as other application developers hoping to sell to beer, wine, and liquor brands.

Developers interested in talking with Facebook on any sensitive questions regarding alcohol policy can email developers-help@facebook.com.

Facebook announced today that is has enabled two new Facebook Platform features that enable developers to restrict access to certain application content - or the entire application itself - from users fitting certain demographic profiles.

Demographic restrictions have been requested by two camps of developers:

1. Those who have licensed content or games only in certain geographic regions - like the US and Canada but not the rest of the world.
2. Those who want to limit access to certain application content or experiences to users of a certain age group - like under 18 or over 21.

Facebook’s new “Demographic Restrictions” APIs will enable developers to limit access to users according to any combination of age and location restrictions.

• The admin.setRestrictionInfo method allows developers to restrict access to the entire application.
• The fb:restricted-to FBML tag allows developers to restrict access to the included content.

So, how exactly is Facebook going about implementing these restrictions? Facebook says it will be using “a combination of what information a user has entered and verified on Facebook as well as IP targeting” for location. Furthermore, Facebook says that developers should not rely on Facebook to implement any restrictions developers are legally obligated to.

[Developers] must use this technology whenever Facebook policies require it… but you can and should consider implementing additional consent or confirmation in your application as appropriate. For example, if for legal reasons your application requires the user to affirm that they are of a certain age or are in a certain location, you should continue to solicit that explicit affirmation, and not regard the fact that the user passed through the Demographic Restrictions as equivalent.

Developers can check the page on the Dev Wiki for more details.

Facebook’s recent policy update prohibiting incentivized invites, originally announced on July 21, has now gone into effect.

The latest announcement takes Facebook’s February policy update forbidding forced invites further by no longer permitting applications to offer incentives to users for sending invitations to their friends. For example, in game apps where the aim is to accumulate gold, developers have introduced mechanisms whereby users are given more gold for each friend they invite. In other applications, developers have only allowed users to unlocks various features as they invite more friends. Both of these behaviors are now prohibited.

Application developers have been asking for more detail on the Platform Policy in the Developers Forum, and the Facebook Platform team has offered valuable clarifications in responses there. Specifically:

• Facebook says that incentivized invites fall within this policy, but actions within an application do not: “Incentivizing sending a notification is prohibited, but incentivizing an app action (like SuperPoking) is not banned (even if that action typically leads to a subsequent notification).  On the other hand, if an app provides bonus points for inviting friends, or just for sending notifications, that would be a violation.”
• Yesterday, the platform team issued this further explanation: “As noted in the blog post, the new policies prevent applications from creating artificial or inappropriate incentives to use Facebook features (including, for example, sending requests and adding profile boxes). Generally, awarding money, or bonus points that can be used to do things in the application or elsewhere, for sending invitations or for the acceptance of invitations, falls under the intended scope of what is prohibited by the policies.”

This new policy isn’t necessarily bad news for developers as some may expect. Facebook is continuing its efforts to improve the quality of messages that applications generate within Facebook communication channels, which should improve the conversion rates of app messages throughout the Platform as a whole.

Kristian Segerstråle, CEO of social gaming company Playfish, welcomes the new guidelines. “We think these changes are an important step forward to improve the overall user experience for games on Facebook and ultimately make the social games market grow faster. We are active supporters of Facebook’s new guiding principles for apps and are working through all our games to ensure we adhere to their spirit,” he told us.

We’ll be staying on top of any further guidance or clarification Facebook issues as it enforces these new policies.

This morning, Vindu Goel at the NYT reported that Scrabulous, the popular Facebook game and Scrabble clone, had been shut down. Just last week, Hasbro, owner of Scrabble IP in North America, filed a DMCA claim against the makers of the game.

However, it appears that the take-down was not Facebook’s doing. Instead, it was a voluntary move by the Agarwalla Brothers (see Inside Facebook interview here) while they sort out their legal matters in North America. Scrabulous remains accessible elsewhere in the world. They write,

Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.

Facebook itself has chosen to stay out of the matter, and not get in the middle of the DMCA issues at hand between Hasbro and the Agarwallas. While Facebook is imposing a clearer policy on developers these days based on the design and functionality of their applications, it’s choosing to not impose itself as the arbiter of IP claims on application developers, but rather to remain a neutral intermediary instead.

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)

As speculated earlier this week, Facebook is announcing two new programs today that will give greater visibility within the News Feed and possibly other communication channels for applications that “deliver value to users and advance the Facebook Platform vision.” Here are the details on the new programs: “Great Apps” and “Application Verification.”

1) Great Apps

Facebook is selecting applications that “embody Facebook’s guiding principles for social applications through their meaningful, trustworthy and well-designed user experiences.” Great Apps will be rewarded with “greater visibility on Facebook, earlier access to new features and more feedback from Facebook.”

Great Apps will be chosen according to the degree to which they embody all 10 Facebook guiding principles as announced by Ben Ling today, and help advance the mission of Facebook. Great apps must have a minimum user base and a strong track record of adherence to Platform policies. Great apps will appear more like native Facebook applications, and will have access to Facebook feedback. iLike and Causes are Facebook’s inaugural Great Apps certification recipients.

2) Application Verification

Facebook is introducing the Application Verification program as well, which is designed to “offer extra assurances to help users identify applications they can trust — applications that are secure, respectful and transparent, and have demonstrated commitment to compliance with Platform policies.” Verified applications will also “benefit from added visibility on Facebook.”

The selection process for both programs will open to developers in September.

Kara Swisher speculates that Facebook is going to announce a “preferred” developer status at f8 tomorrow for those “developing in a way more in line with the goals of Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.”

While no one knows exactly what Facebook’s criteria or rewards might be, Ben Ling, Facebook’s Director of Platform Product Marketing, openly discussed Facebook’s intentions to create something like a “certification” process by which Facebook might be able to bring attention to and reward developers meeting its criteria several weeks ago at GSP East.

What benefits might Facebook give to those it recognizes?

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.

Last week, Facebook application SpeedDate was temporarily suspended from the Facebook Platform for violation of Facebook Platform policy. While SpeedDate founder Dan Abelon understandably isn’t willing to discuss the details of the suspension publicly, he has offered to share his thoughts and advice for fellow Facebook developers regarding his recent experience here. Dan’s words follow.

Dan Abelon, Founder, SpeedDate:

While some think it harsh that Facebook temporarily removed the SpeedDate app from users’ profiles without warning, we understand that Facebook’s ultimate goal is aligned with ours – to provide a great experience for users.  SpeedDate is focused on revolutionizing online dating by setting people up on instant live web dates, and the Facebook Platform will continue to be part of our strategy.

It’s clear from our conversations with them that they are focused on making sure that leading social app developers such as SpeedDate stay up to date with guideline changes, and play more moderately as related to any grey areas.  A lot of developers are worried about the implications for their apps, so here are a few things we recommend based on our experience:

1. Stay up to date with Facebook’s changes to their guidelines, especially in the Developers Wiki.  New rules came into effect on June 18th, and we assume there will be continued changes in the future.
2. If you think a rule is ambiguous, err on the conservative side and don’t push the limits.
3. Look at other apps for creative ideas, but be wary about borrowing an idea from an app (big or small) without a very clear understanding of Facebook’s rules.
4. React quickly if you think Facebook has taken any action with respect to your app.  As soon as you identify the issue, alter your code and contact Facebook to let them know.  If your users love your app, they’ll expect nothing less.  One user wrote on the SpeedDate fan page: “If it’s not back tomorrow I may have to have a breakdown and go sit in a corner.”  Because we took quick action, the app was back within days for the many hundreds of thousands of users who regularly rely on SpeedDate to meet new people.
5. While it may sound cliché, focus on building highly engaging apps.  SpeedDate has hosted over 10 million online speed dates since we launched in October, and for us the most important thing is creating a faster and more fun way for you to meet new people.
6. If you feel like your app is in the clear, spend your time working on the new profile redesign!

We welcome any developers who are grappling with these issues to reach out to us directly at info (at) speeddate.com.