Managing a Facebook Application
I thought I would take some time and share some of the more frustrating aspects of running a free dating application on Facebook.
First off let me tell you first that the Facebook developer network is an amazing tool and truly is a win, win. The developer has the ability to access the 200 million or so active members currently using Facebook, this is much easier said than done but there are very few opportunities where a company can immediately have access to such a massive network. I have to applaud what Facebook has been able to accomplish is such a short time. Nothing is ever perfect and there certainly have been a lot of users complaining about the recent changes to the feed and home page. In the end Facebook IS winning the social network war because the product is, well, really good!
And on Facebook’s side they win because the developer network and it’s 60 thousand or so applications have had a major impact on their growth. When applications become popular it keeps users on the site longer and in the end this equates to more revenue for Facebook.
So here are some of the issues - more so areas I think Facebook could improve on.
1. The new user review system – Every application has an “About Page” within this page users have the ability to rate an application on a score of 1 to 5 stars. What has changed recently is users that don’t have your application installed have the ability to vote. On top of this they don’t have to leave a comment when voting. I have no issue with a user leaving a candid comment about our application, but the minimum requirement should be that they have actually used the application. This would alleviate some of the random negative reviews that all developers have recently seen a surge in.
2. Commenting on reviews - Another area I would love to see added is the ability for an administrator to comment on a review, much like commenting on a wall post. We have had some users complain that our application is lacking certain things or that we are doing things that go against our privacy policy, in all of these cases this simply wasn’t true. Because of this I would love to be able to reply to a users comments and let them know how to access a certain page or feature. This would help other users and give us and other developers the ability to retain a client and/or mitigate loosing potential users from not joining because they see a negative review.
There are of course some technical issues with the Facebook developer platform, we’ll leave those comments and review for another post.
Overall things are pretty good in the Facebook developer world, like any piece of software nothing is ever perfect. The good news is software is always an evolving entity and we fully expect Facebook to continue making improvements. Maybe if we’re lucky one of the decision makers will read this post. Fingers crossed!
