Well the big news this week in the world of social networking and gaming was the Developer Garage hosted by none other than Facebook. If you have an application on Facebook this week was a tad stressful. The first problem was much like the swine flu; the media, in this case all of the tech blogs, went crazy.  In fact some called it D-Day for Facebook developers. There are many blogs that have already outlined exactly what the changes are and for my money Inside Facebook does a job of outlining what has happened and how it could affect you.

Here are the things we’re excited about and the changes we’re a pinch anxious about. You need to keep in mind however that none of this really matters until the changes go live and we get to see exactly what the changes look like and how they will impact us.

The Good

Emails - Facebook is now going to give all apps the ability to ask the user for their current email address. Some think this is a step back as email is an old and archaic way of communicating. What is good about this is that it gives the apps that work hard to generate users the comfort of knowing that they don’t need to rely on Facebook to connect with them.

Canvas – Another step forward is the ability for developers to create a canvas so users will feel more like they’re on the app’s page rather than one tucked inside Facebook. This, along with the email request, is a strong message from Facebook. It implies the user and his/her information isn’t owned solely by Facebook.  It also indicates that Facebook understands the importance of the Developer Network and the success it has brought both them and the companies using the network!

The Stream – Developers love the stream and while many hate the recent changes to the stream despite the blogs posts from earlier this week the stream shall for the most part remain, unchanged.

The Bad (Heck given our glass is half full mentality, I will actually call this – The Stuff we are a tad concerned about) – Notifications, this is the one that most developers are nervous about. First off notices are going to disappear; developers won’t have the ability to communicate using this method anymore. To replace it users will have a dashboard that will appear to the left of the stream, it should work better for the user which is great, honestly! What concerns developers is if the user doesn’t have their app book marked it will/may be difficult for the user to see these messages.  Worst case scenario is that the user will outright ignore them. This really is one of those things that could work out well for developers or could dramatically make things worse.

User to user communication – This doesn’t affect Datepad because our users communicate through the site/application. Today apps that allow user to user communication use the notification box and going forward they will be placed within the inbox. This is something that most gaming apps are very concerned with.

I have only touched on a handful of the major changes coming in the next 6 months. Most of them are good for both users and developers and some well, we’ll have to wait and see. As always Datepad is looking forward to working with Facebook and more importantly creating a great user experience for our members!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 3:15 pm 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.