New Facebook Profiles And Developers: Plain English Version
The new Facebook profile redesign is coming down the pipeline. The official switch over is TBD, no doubt a lesson learned from pushing new features onto users before they were ready (newsfeed, beacon).
But the new profile is coming, and will have an effect on how applications do business on Facebook. There are a couple of big ideas Facebook is pushing with the new design: tabs, incremental authentication, newsfeed publisher. Overall these changes are adding some new inventory as well as subjecting developers to some new rules.
Try looking at your profile on http://new.facebook.com/profile.php to get an idea of what the changes look like before continuing. Here’s a deeper dive on the changes from Facebook.
New Real Estate
Developers are getting access to some new profile real estate with the addition of tabs, info tabs, and application boxes. Tabs will allow users to elevate an application in importance by giving it’s own tab. There’s a max of 6 total tabs, including Facebook’s own (all other app tabs are accessible on a dropdown menu).
With the intention of pushing FB to more self expression, developers will also get to put tidbits of info on a user’s info tab and application box tab. The info tab will be home for micro content, like what causes you helped, or songs you listened too. That info will be limited to 5 lines per data field (i.e. fav books) and/or a select number of images. The good news is you’ll be able to hyperlink out from here.
The application boxes look to behave very similarly to the profile box, although now they’ll all be on a separate page.
Tabs, Like Canvas Pages But Different
Tabs are a big part of the profile overhaul. They let users elevate a group of apps to the navigation menu of their profile, which is good news for top applications or niche apps with passionate audiences. Users choose apps they want on a tab from a menu after installing the app.
Tabs are like canvas pages in that they are a large piece of real estate that developers can control. However, app tabs are initially read only when the user visits and only “come alive” after a visitor clicks. They also have to be written in FBML. After an interaction the app can then play flash or run AJAX. The tabs at no point know what user is viewing them, so no profile view trackers will work unless perhaps a visitor interacts with the tab.
Canvas pages will remain the same.
New Rules
Perhaps the most interesting development in the redesign is the change in adding an application (FB post). Instead of users feeling like they’re applying for a credit card every time you add an app, you’ll just be making a choice about sharing personal info and staying logged in permanently.
All other interactions will be contextually approved by the user. This means that applications will have to ask before they post news feed stories or send out emails when the user takes an action that triggers the action.
The impact of the change on developers is trivial for options such as adding profile boxes or sidebar links. The real impact affects newsfeed stories and emailers. The good news is that newsfeed opt in will be by default (users can go into options and opt out totally). Spam control will now be Facebook’s problem. Developers will have to ask for permission to send larger newfeed items meant to communicate greater importance (social weight) to the user’s feed.
Email communications will now not be up front. Developers, no doubt, benefited from users lazily opting in on all options (including email) in order to add apps faster. Now developers will have to ask for the privilege of sending emails to a user.
What’s Missing
Facebook has be very upfront with the functionality their adding (heck, they’re “open sourcing” the platform). However, they are still TBD on advertising for the new design. Developers have been surviving based on the ability to monetize traffic sent to canvas pages. While the new redesign allows for more points of contact, the addition of un-monetizable tabs may steal revenue from developers as users take care of more mundane tasks through the application boxes or application tabs, leaving the survival of some applications in question.
Tags: developers, facebook