Verified Apps: A Big Bureaucratic Step In The Right Direction

November 18th, 2008 by Nick Gonzalez

After a year as effectively a “free market”, Facebook has finally launched it’s “verified app” program, which will give Facebook’s blessing to apps that meet their quality standards.

It will cost $375 to apply ($175 for students and non-profits) and must be renewed each year to stay in the program. Verified apps will have a few cosmetic advantages (seal of approval) and some TBA benefits rolled out over time, but the real difference will be in how much Facebook aids verified apps and/or punishes unverified apps. Facebook has several knobs they can turn, from how often your users can invite each other, notify, and where those messages show up in a user’s activity stream. Wrapped in the new redesign was a tightening of these quotas. It has yet to be seen whether Facebook will simply reward the winners, or also punish the apps they don’t like.

The New Bureacracy

Theoretically none of this regulation should be needed. The “best” apps should be the one’s user’s share with friends the most. However, this kind of popularity contest led developers to focus on optimizing traffic flow. Apps focused on sending messages instead of building functionality.

So Facebook has had to step in to shape where they think the platform should go. Facebook would say app verification aligns incentives away from generating more messages to users, and toward pleasing Facebook’s usability goals.

However, the problems of spammy apps was largely cleared up with the Facebook redesign. The new verification program just creates an undue burden on small developers. Developers will have to provide an itemized list of how their application functions, as well as screen shot storyboards of their apps. Even still, they need to make sure their apps abide by a laundry list of functional requirements.

This is antithetical to the way applications are launched. Developers are used to prototyping quickly, finding out what works, and investing in the successes. If Facebook squeezes too tightly on unverified apps, the cost of applying for verification to get the reach they need to test an app, will simply be too great.

Toward A Better Platform

While the verification program will create problems for small developers, incumbent developers will see a boost if they get verified. Verification provides advertisers with a greater level of quality assurance, making advertisers more comfortable with advertising on this cohort of applications.

Tags: developers

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 11:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.