As you’ve probably heard, Facebook is making several changes to the Platform next month. The new user profile has won most of the attention, but the changes reach a lot further than that. Facebook is continuing their campaign to reduce app spamminess and app fatigue by making low-level changes that alter the way that users interact with and spread applications. We’ve looked at these changes in depth and are sharing our point of view with our clients and readers.
User Profile Functionality
The most visually noticeable upcoming change is the new user profile. Profiles are becoming more action-focused. A user’s current profile is largely made up of application profile boxes. We used to pitch profile boxes as one of the main reasons for building a Facebook app — Your brand can have a visual presence right on a user’s profile. We’ve discovered over time that despite this appeal, profile boxes are one of less importance than one would think. Facebook users are less likely to view their own profile as they are to view a friend’s. Our statistics and reporting engine has told us, with almost every app we’ve built, that the profile box itself draws far less new user interaction than feed items and user to user communication channels.
It’s a good thing that profiles aren’t the main driving force behind app usage, because they’re about to get much less prominent. Most apps currently focus their efforts on the “wide” area of a user’s profile (who wouldn’t want more space to use?). In the new profile design, the main profile page doesn’t have a wide area for applications — there is only a narrow column that is now limited in height. Only a handful of apps are displayed there; the rest are placed on a separate overflow “Boxes” tab. The upshot is that apps should focus more on their narrow appearance and be prepared to be relegated to the less-traffic’d Boxes section.
There is, however, a new feature available to applications that wish to manifest themselves on profiles. An app can optionally be capable of having its own full tab. Apps with tabs have much more functionality available than profile boxes provide. Profile boxes are a cached, static view of an application. A full tab has more interactive possibilities. The downside is that users must explicitly create a tab for an application, and there is likely to be a limit on how many they can create. The decision for a brand creating a Facebook app is whether the relatively small number of users who will grant your app a full tab is worth the added cost of a developing a full tab view. Our recommendation is to wait until we get a sense of how users are interacting with this new feature.
Feeds
Feed items are also being re-evaluated, with completely new APIs for developers to use. Optimizing the design and utility of a feed item has always given us an opportunity to make an app viral by knowing what works. The new functionality further recognizes the importance of building feed items that are relevant, flexible, and have appropriate calls to action. Users will be able to choose a one-line or short version of a news feed. In a trend that is seen in other new features as well, an app will be able to request special user permission for a more flexible full feed item.
Sessions
Apps are often judged by how their number of installs (or often by “downloads”, which is a misnomer). Facebook shied away from this measure early on. When the Platform first launched, they revealed the total number of users as a public statistic, but soon changed it to “Daily Active Users”, a measure of engagement instead of reach. App developers didn’t exactly follow suit — an install was still the holy grail of user interaction. Once a user installed an app, a large number of permissions were automatically granted, including accessing profile data, sending notifications, and emailing users directly.
Facebook has encouraged developers to allow users to get a taste of an application before requiring them to install. Public app pages appear in search results and feed items are more likely to show up in news feeds if they point to public pages. Despite these two big incentives, most developers still decided to require users to install their app even to do basic interaction. Now Facebook is forcing the issue — an app will not be able to require installation initially. Instead, it will require a much ligher app login, which will grant some permissions but not the full set of permissions granted by an install. Apps must then decide at which point in the user flow they should offer to promote the user to a full install.
Our take is that this is good for the platform, so it’s largely good for brands as well. Users will be less likely to worry about what an app will do on their behalf if they have this simple no-obligation way of interacting with the app. It does, however, change some of the long term decisions for the app. Many brands are looking at apps as a way to conduct a campaign that eventually turns into an email list. Instead, it’s to their advantage to continue to engage those users on Facebook by introducing new content or campaigns. Ultimately, it will be easier to get a larger number of brand impressions, but more difficult to get long-term users. That’s why we’ll make sure that every app is compelling enough that users will want to go to the full install.
Other Upcoming Changes
There are less-discussed or less-defined changes coming. Apps will be able to post new items to a user’s personal information section (with the user’s permission). For example, a branded app for a soft drink might ask users which flavor is their favorite. Their profile would be edited so that in addition to their favorite quotes and favorite movies, it would display their favorite flavor. There are also visual design changes that give apps some new functionality with a lot more room to display their content.
Existing Apps
Apps that are built on top of Context Optional’s Social Application Server will continue to function, unmodified, with the new features. Since permissions are changing, some individual application features may change in behavior (for example, apps that email users would have to be modified to ask permission). We are actively testing our apps with the new features and we’re also encouraging our clients to talk to us about how they can leverage the new features to their benefit.
