The Latest Facebook Application Developer Trick: Unapproved Notifications

Over the past couple weeks I've been receiving an increased volume of emails from users who were surprised when unprompted notifications were generated and placed in their feed. What's most interesting though is that multiple applications that have been sent to me (and are now being discussed in the Facebook developer forums as well) are all verified applications. The unfortunate thing is that it's practically impossible for Facebook to police the platform. That's why aggressive ads (like the ones I wrote about last week) are still running all over the platform. Facebook's response has been to handle violations on a case by case basis. Ultimately that's all that they can do. Companies violate the terms, Facebook gives them a slap on the wrist and within no time at all it's back to the same strategy. I've spoken with a number of large application developers about this complicated dynamic. I've previously written that the best practice held by many developers is to violate the terms and then ask for forgiveness later. That's the case for many developers and without a strict enforcement of terms, small and large developers alike are forced to consider pushing the limits. In this sort of environment I typically turn to the age old saying, "Don't hate the player, hate the game." The player of course being the company that decides to push the limits. It's an unfortunate situation because not everybody gets to be a player and politics ends up being much more important than anything else. While much of the world is run by "insiders", making a platform an inside game is not the way to win. At the same time, constantly policing the platform is not always the most effective model. I would say that letting developers dictate how things work would be a good thing if it was the open web. This is the Facebook platform though and unfortunately things aren't that simple. So with Facebook placed between a rock and a hard place, I would argue that the gauntlet should theoretically drop and strict enforcement needs to take place. Can Facebook become a strict enforcer to the companies that are most profitable on their platform though? That's a hard question to answer. Do you think Facebook should strictly enforce their terms? Do you think Facebook has the capacity to do so even if they wanted to?

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The Latest Facebook Application Developer Trick: Unapproved Notifications

Nick O'Neill

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Nick O'Neill