The Facebook team announced last night that you’ll be able to demote your Facebook apps to a lower status on your provide, essentially making it easier to hide them away.
The “clean-up tool” is going to “clean up” a lot of soon-to-be pissed off developers.
This just falls right in line with the Facebook business model warnings I’ve posted about in the past.
Has anyone seen news or evidence (*gasp*) that being on Facebook is good for more than a small handful of application developers?
I’d like to see that.
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1 response so far ↓
1 Tim Marman // Jan 14, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I fail to see how this is a bad thing (for users OR developers) and how this is a disincentive to develop on the Facebook platform.
I agree with the assessment - and have talked myself about in the past - that Facebook doesn’t give you a business model. And if your only business model is advertising, then maybe you have to worry.
But as you said yourself on TechDirt’s insight community, it makes sense for “some” applications, just like it doesn’t make sense for others. Quite simply, Facebook doesn’t give you a business model - it gives you a bootstrapped audience and a set of social connections. If you can’t make money off that audience, you’re right - you shouldn’t bother building a Facebook app.
Of course, it also speaks to why an audience on Facebook is less valuable than your “own” audience, because you don’t OWN those relationships.
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