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The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

sethcall.com

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Re: The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

#21

Post by bryne »

papertiger wrote: post #18
geuis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, this is not the case. I am currently working for a large media company that had/has relatively close ties with members of the FB dev team. The position I hold now was previously occupied by a fellow who went to work for FB and was a key interface with them over the last year and a half for things like FB Connect. I can tell you now that we got no privileged documentation that anyone else didn't. The only thing…

The company I work for has email and phone access to a Facebook developer for questions, but we are part of a beta program. When I browsed the API on my own it was an utter disaster on par with the article's description.

We are probably in a similar program, but our developer contact was basically of no use whatsoever. Probably not his fault - it seems to be a cultural thing as observed above.

Even after last week's developer meeting and subsequent rollout of changes, my request for documentation was met with - not paraphrasing - "We'll get back to you."

Re: The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

#22

Post by sbov »

ownedthx wrote: post #16

Carl Sjogreen, who leads the platform PM team, commented that good changes are coming: http://www.sethcall.com/blog/2010/09/30/facebook-api-does-no... I am really quite pleased he took the time to address the post. Let's hope he can succeed.

I could have sworn I read something similar to this a year ago.

Re: The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

#23

Post by nphase »

ericflo wrote: post #7

This is so, so correct. I've been doing Facebook stuff for a few years now, and this rant is just the tip of the iceberg. Other favorites: * They accidentally flipped the switch to a new authentication mechanism overnight to a beta with no documentation. It took them over 48 hours to realize and fix this mistake. * At one point I was asking for JSON and intermittently getting back XML instead. Apparently JSON parsers…

I have to agree. Just about every bit of this article is correct, it's part why I hate developing for Facebook so, so much. For an API whose stated goal was to power the social fabric of the interwebs, Facebook is doing a terrible job of letting those of us who create the interwebs work with it. The only response I've gotten from FB engineers was either "Sorry." or "I don't know what your talking about," both in person at F8 or via IRC.

Re: The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

#24

Post by atomical »

tsycho wrote: post #17

I have a humble request for all of you developers who are building facebook apps. Please create an open source project (or a forum with all the tricks you are discovering) so that everyone doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. Basically, please collaborate your efforts to create a more reliable unofficial API documentation for FB. Ryan Waggoner wrote a similar post like this a few days back ( http://news.ycombinator.co…

Is there an unofficial wiki for Facebook developers that is independent?

Re: The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

#25

Post by rwhitman »

tsycho wrote: post #17

I have a humble request for all of you developers who are building facebook apps. Please create an open source project (or a forum with all the tricks you are discovering) so that everyone doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. Basically, please collaborate your efforts to create a more reliable unofficial API documentation for FB. Ryan Waggoner wrote a similar post like this a few days back ( http://news.ycombinator.co…

I agree, an up-to-date unofficial FB developers wiki would have been really useful on the last fb api project i worked on

Re: The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

#26

Post by rwhitman »

There was definitely a cultural problem at facebook in terms of how they were treating the developer community. The copious unanswered critical issues in the forums among other things sent a very clear message that FB has other priorities.

Judging by the comments left by newly hired FB staff on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1731427 and on this post, maybe that attitude is finally turning around. But I personally really feel burned by my experience working with the facebook platform. Their deficiencies cost me a lot of money, and caused a lot of stress due to blame and doubt applied upon my team by skeptical clients. When it comes to Facebook, I'm going to have trust issues for a long time...

Re: The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

#27

Post by portman »

tsycho wrote: post #17

I have a humble request for all of you developers who are building facebook apps. Please create an open source project (or a forum with all the tricks you are discovering) so that everyone doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. Basically, please collaborate your efforts to create a more reliable unofficial API documentation for FB. Ryan Waggoner wrote a similar post like this a few days back ( http://news.ycombinator.co…

For starters, more people could support the Facebook Developer proposal at StackExchange.

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7285/facebook-deve...

Personally, I think the StackOverflow engine would be a great way to build up a crowdsourced wiki of FBAPI knowledge.

Re: The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

#28

Post by btilly »

A co-worker who had to work with the Facebook API in a previous job had this to say about it. Working with the Facebook API is like poking yourself in the eye with a fork, repeatedly. It is interesting to see the problems he described confirmed and explained in more detail.

Re: The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

#29

Post by sofuture »

dasil003 wrote: post #19
lrm242 wrote: post #2

FB seems to have a two tiered developer program. There are the peons, the guys forced to toil away trying to figure out how to make the stuff work by doing exactly what is described in the blog. And then there are the anointed: the big companies or YC-related startups that enjoy special access to FB employees to get the answers they need. For now it doesn't seem to really be harming FB. They enjoy extreme growth and…

You're overstating this quite a bit. I work for a startup that was an early launch partner for Pages back in mid 2007, and have built and maintained our Facebook application from that time. We have numerous contacts inside Facebook, and they can be of help occasionally, but they can just as easily turn around and screw us. They stole hundreds of extremely popular pages from us that we built up over years, and they di…

API stability is a problem.

An engineering culture that breaks APIs is bullshit. Taking 48+ hours to fix show-stopper platform errors is bullshit. Their 'innovative approach' is not working and the proof is in the pudding. They have not reached 500 million users solely on the success of this engineering approach, and I would vehemently argue they have reached 500 million users in spite of it.

The price will become too high to pay, if the future they envision involves third party developers at all. 500 million users is a hell of a lot of momentum, but it won't carry them as far as they want to go.

Re: The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

#30

Post by dasil003 »

sofuture wrote: post #29
dasil003 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're overstating this quite a bit. I work for a startup that was an early launch partner for Pages back in mid 2007, and have built and maintained our Facebook application from that time. We have numerous contacts inside Facebook, and they can be of help occasionally, but they can just as easily turn around and screw us. They stole hundreds of extremely popular pages from us that we built up over years, and they di…

API stability is a problem. An engineering culture that breaks APIs is bullshit . Taking 48+ hours to fix show-stopper platform errors is bullshit . Their 'innovative approach' is not working and the proof is in the pudding. They have not reached 500 million users solely on the success of this engineering approach, and I would vehemently argue they have reached 500 million users in spite of it. The price will become…

Of course it's a problem. It's a terribly onerous problem for developers. But the thing is that they don't have any problem getting developers to deal with it because there's really no alternative. And businesses hiring web developers are demanding Facebook integration as much as ever. Sure, if they fixed the problems then developers might be more enthusiastic, but you haven't shown that that will improve Facebook's bottom line. They have no shortage of apps, users, or growth, so the onus is on you to support your argument.

Saying that you think they have reached 500 million users inspite of their engineering approach is far from a common-sense argument. It's clear that Facebook ran technical circles around MySpace. And it's clear that they have launched new features at a breakneck pace throughout their history that have fueled growth at every turn.

I personally will avoid working with Facebook as much as I can, but will that hurt them? Not in the current business climate.

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