More Tips for Beginning Facebook Developers

zachallia — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:16:35 +0000

I don't feel quite as awesome as I did last summer when I tell people that I "develop facebook applications." Despite personally being really happy with my applications, I get the feeling that users now perceive facebook apps as spammy, poorly designed, and pointless. Sure, there are some applications that are knowingly like this (and they are probably making some quick cash), but to many new developers they just don't know any better.

The points in Tyler's post, as well as the ones below, will help new developers start on the right track and then we can all feel awesome again to be a facebook application developer. I am staying away from saying "don't spam" because that is a topic in need of it's own post.

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it isn't there. Do a little research on existing applications with the same idea before you start development. This will help you decide whether you should pick up their best features and improve on them, or just scrap your idea altogether. There is definitely room for similar applications, but don't build a product if you can't make it better.

She may be hot, but she has no brain. Looks are great, but make sure you have a well built application to support your idea. Users love to uninstall when they see error messages.

Keep improving and adding features to your applications based on user requests, they really know best. I may be crazy, but I like to read and respond to nearly every (positive) comment and suggestion on Free Gifts boards.

Tyler pointed out that the one year mark is approaching, and the amount of progress the developer community has made is really amazing. Over the next few months there are a few things I really hope to see: inter-application collaboration, more functional user interfaces, and a decline of "one timer" apps (quizzes, etc).

Are Free Gifts Still Gifts?

zachallia — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:27:11 +0000

Facebook has been pretty nice to Free Gifts in the past, despite originally being a blatant rip-off of the real Gifts application. Prior to today, I have only received one complaint from Facebook regarding Free Gifts practices. They asked me to remove a gift that looked similar to one of their gifts. I was okay with that even though mine was a lemon and theirs was a lime; maybe it was tough for the color blind audience to decipher? Today, I received my second complaint from them, which stated:

Your Facebook application, Free Gifts, is currently in violation of the Platform Application Guidelines section I.3 (see <a href="http://developers.facebook.com/guidelines.php" title="http://developers.facebook.com/guidelines.php">http://developers.facebook.com/guidelines.php</a>). Specifically, please note that the Terms prohibit applications from acting in a manner that is misleading, deceptive, or fraudulent.
 
The application's link under the profile picture uses the same wording as Facebook's Gift application (please see attached).  Please change this to reflect your application's name to differentiate Facebook's Gift application and "Free Gifts" application, as it is currently misleading users to think that this refers to the associated Facebook features.

I will admit it is relatively the same wording, but they failed to explain how using "Send xxxx a Gift" is deceptive or misleading to users. First of all, Facebook provides a tool tip when you hover over a profile action which says "Provided by the xxxxxx Application," which immediately makes a distinction between Gifts and Free Gifts. Second, as far as I know, users are still sending a gift when they use Free Gifts. Third, I have been using this text for longer than I can remember now with no complaints. With over 50 million gifts sent, I have never had a user say they were "trying to use the real gift" application.

I did comply somewhat by making all future profile actions say "free gift" instead of "gift," but there is no easy way for me to fix the 8 million profiles already containing the text. As of now they have failed to respond to my question of how exactly I was deceiving users, but I am really interested in hearing their reasoning.

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More Tips for Beginning Facebook Developers

Are Free Gifts Still Gifts?