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Verified Extortion

mattmaroon.com

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Re: Verified Extortion

#31

Post by ssharp »

mattmaroon wrote: post #19
grandalf wrote: post #10

Why is he complaining about Facebook when all the company did was respond to user complaints about apps that behaved badly? When thousands of people got daily invites to stupid apps, something had to be done. Regardless of whether facebook had ever announced the verified apps program, the new restrictions would make sense. When you develop for a young platform (particularly a proprietary one) you should realize it ma…

They didn't really do that at all. Open up your Facebook home page and take a look. Maybe you like knowing which 80's sitcom star each of your friends are, but for most people the platform has just gotten spammier over time. The new restrictions certainly made sense when they took average apps from infinite invites per day down to 20. But dropping that 20 back to 12, then charging you to get back to 20 doesn't help u…

maybe it's just be, but the stupid quiz spam never bothered me as much as the stupid game spam.

Re: Verified Extortion

#32

Post by pj »

grandalf wrote: post #10

Why is he complaining about Facebook when all the company did was respond to user complaints about apps that behaved badly? When thousands of people got daily invites to stupid apps, something had to be done. Regardless of whether facebook had ever announced the verified apps program, the new restrictions would make sense. When you develop for a young platform (particularly a proprietary one) you should realize it ma…

For all the logic required to code, programmers are some of the most irrational people on the internets.

Re: Verified Extortion

#34

Post by grandalf »

mattmaroon wrote: post #22
SamAtt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook certainly could have handled things better but other than that I agree with you. It seems a little obnoxious to demand free service. Even if it was free before. If it were more money he might have a better case. But given other platforms cost thousands of dollars (Sony's Playstation program for example) I don't see $375 as that much of a hardship.

You clearly didn't read the article through. I have no problem with them making money (beyond the extra few million ad impressions I generate them each day). I have a problem with the fact that it feels exactly like a Mafia-style protection payment. I guess it's ironic that the most notable game there is Mafia Wars. If they just said "everyone has to pay us $375/yr once they get over 10k installs" or something, I'd b…

The logic behind the fees is essentially the same as a Pigovian Tax:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

It may not be "fair" but it results in widespread modification of behavior in a socially beneficial way.

Taxes on carbon fuels are not fair -- lots of firms built up huge infrastructure on narrow profit margins before such taxes were imposed -- but if you advocate a different policy what would it be? Every policy entails some "transfer" from one group to another. At least with a tax the incentive is clear and obvious moving forward, and precisely targets the specific negative externality it's intended to address.

Re: Verified Extortion

#35

Post by grandalf »

mattmaroon wrote: post #19
grandalf wrote: post #10

Why is he complaining about Facebook when all the company did was respond to user complaints about apps that behaved badly? When thousands of people got daily invites to stupid apps, something had to be done. Regardless of whether facebook had ever announced the verified apps program, the new restrictions would make sense. When you develop for a young platform (particularly a proprietary one) you should realize it ma…

They didn't really do that at all. Open up your Facebook home page and take a look. Maybe you like knowing which 80's sitcom star each of your friends are, but for most people the platform has just gotten spammier over time. The new restrictions certainly made sense when they took average apps from infinite invites per day down to 20. But dropping that 20 back to 12, then charging you to get back to 20 doesn't help u…

The situation is much improved. I no longer get all the invitations and they were the most annoying aspect of apps -- as were the invitations required pages on so many apps (which actually got me to stop installing apps)

Re: Verified Extortion

#36

Post by mattmaroon »

blader wrote: post #29
mattmaroon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you joking? The top Facebook apps make more in a month than the top iPhone apps make in a lifetime. Even mid level apps, the sort that would never make the top 25 on iTunes, make more in a year than a top 10 paid app on iTunes does. Try Googling for Zynga Revenues. The Facebook platform is orders of magnitude more profitable than iPhone. Don't mistake buzz for profitability.

Matt, the more people think that Facebook apps don't make any money, the happier I think we'll both be. =)

Ha, true. If it weren't broadly available information that you almost had to close your eyes to miss I'd never mention it.

Re: Verified Extortion

#37

Post by rms »

teej wrote: post #26
haasted wrote: post #25

The article left me with a few "Facebook apps"-newbie questions. Hope someone here will be able to answer. 1. How are Facebook apps monetized? Advertising? 2. What do applications use the collected user data for? I once saw a description of the kind of access an application gets to the user's data, and it seemed a bit daunting.

1. Advertising + Virtual Goods (selling "items" or "currency" inside a game for power, pleasure, or status) 2. You can't really "collect" the data. Facebook's Terms state that you can't keep user data for longer than 24 hours. The original idea was that you could use their data to display demographically-relevant ads.

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