Facebook has outgrown its small-guy appeal, and is no longer the “David” to MySpace’s “Goliath,” as both social networks now have about the same number of unique monthly visitors. comScore indicated that both Facebook and MySpace had approximately 115 million unique visitors in April, while other reports indicate that the figure has risen to 118 million.
As expected, there have been many mini-backlashes against Facebook on its way to Internet superstardom. News Feeds and Beacons aside, Facebook’s reputation has become mired in dirt lately, in large part thanks to one of the features that helped to ignite the social network’s huge growth: its applications.
As of Monday, Facebook analytics and developer services company, Adonomics, indicated that there were 28,946 applications on Facebook (28,797 according to Facebook itself), with 899,115,865 installs, and over 200,000 developers evaluating the platform. The applications were used over 34 million times during the previous 24 hours, and accumulate to a total valuation of over $438 million, according to Adonomics. Clearly, Facebook apps are huge.
It would be great for Facebook and its users if all of these applications were legitimate, straightforward, and likable. However, as is the case in nearly every aspect of this world, this is not the case. Many applications are useless, annoying, and intrusive, if not deceiving.
An untamed Facebook app world is not a viable option for a company trying to assert itself as a leader on the entire Internet, one that is trying its best to live up to its $x billion valuation.
So, the social networking giant decided to restrict the visibility of all applications. The changes will be reflected in the anticipated unveiling of a new Facebook user interface, and will essentially mask applications that a user decides to try out (at least initially). This will be done in order to get rid of the daunting application installation screen and all the unknown visibility concerns that may lie behind it. It is also aimed at limiting the wild (and sometimes uncouth) spread of the more trashy applications.
This move seems to take some of the air out of the room for many of the bigger developers of these apps. While smaller developers may be able to take advantage of this more “level playing ground,” larger developers have less incentive to continue a furious pace of app releases.
Slide, founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, is the developer behind FunWall, Top Friends, and SuperPoke!, among various others. It has a valuation of just under $324 million, according to Adonomics. Less than a week after Facebook announced its planned changes for its applications, Slide announced that it would stop pumping out new apps and would focus on maintaining and improving the apps that it has already released. While it is hailed by many as a smart move for the company, it is an undeniable slap in the face to Facebook. Slide is clearly not happy with the pending change.
This is likely a sentiment shared by many of the other larger Facebook app developers. It will be interesting to observe how Facebook responds, if at all, and who will ultimately end up the big, long-term winners and losers. As of now, it appears that both large developers and Facebook lose at least a little bit to begin with, and they both have tasteless application makers to blame.
Sources:
http://www.allfacebook.com/2008/06/
slide-to-stop-releasing-new-facebook-apps/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
slide_stop_making_new_facebook_apps.php
http://mashable.com/2008/06/08/slide-facebook/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/02/
facebook-applications-arent-meant-to-be-installed/
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