Facebook screws app developers on notifications • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook screws app developers on notifications

#31

Post by mattmaroon » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 2:50 AM UTC

jamiemchale wrote: post #7

purplefruit wrote: post #2

As a facebook user, I'm happy I'm not longer gonna get "your friend has invited you to this app..." notifications. As a developer, though, I can see why this would be frustrating.

The main frustration here is that the Requests are those that are actively initiated by a user. A friend is actively trying to invite you to the app, rather than just an app spamming those who have once installed it.

That logic melts down when it meets the ecosystem that churns out 5 Farmvilles or Slot Manias a day. Suddenly a rotating set of 1% of your friends list can make using Facebook so painful you'll stop, permanently.

So many new apps launch that banning notifications by app gets tedious. They all suck in different groups of your friends, so banning notifications by friends is tedious. Not forever, perhaps, but long enough to make you think ill of Facebook.

We've been there before, and even though as a developer I miss it, it was the right thing of Facebook to do.

Re: Facebook screws app developers on notifications

#32

Post by mattmaroon » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 2:50 AM UTC

jamiemchale wrote: post #7

purplefruit wrote: post #2

As a facebook user, I'm happy I'm not longer gonna get "your friend has invited you to this app..." notifications. As a developer, though, I can see why this would be frustrating.

The main frustration here is that the Requests are those that are actively initiated by a user. A friend is actively trying to invite you to the app, rather than just an app spamming those who have once installed it.

That logic melts down when it meets the ecosystem that churns out 5 Farmvilles or Slot Manias a day. Suddenly a rotating set of 1% of your friends list can make using Facebook so painful you'll stop, permanently.

So many new apps launch that banning notifications by app gets tedious. They all suck in different groups of your friends, so banning notifications by friends is tedious. Not forever, perhaps, but long enough to make you think ill of Facebook.

We've been there before, and even though as a developer I miss it, it was the right thing of Facebook to do.

Re: Facebook screws app developers on notifications

#33

Post by jamiemchale » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 9:06 AM UTC

douglasp wrote: post #30

I replied on the site, but I'll share my comment here as well. I work on Facebook Platform. We never "turned off the Requests functionality for apps that are not labelled as games, breaking many live apps." We never turned off requests. We never broke a single app. What we did do was test the impact of issuing a notification for a new app request for several categories of apps. The sending and delivering of requests…

Thanks for the reply Douglas, I'd dropped you a note via FB asking for advice on how to proceed.

It's a very frustrating position to be in. I can understand why you need to test, and the arguments in favour of preventing spam.

It does seem that when you play by (what you think are) the rules you can get screwed, as others take advantage of the system. It's been a very frustrating few days!