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Two weeks ago a number of Facebook developers logged into the site to horrible news: their applications had suddenly been disabled without warning. The culprit was Facebook’s spam-fighting bot, which automatically tracks the amount of negative feedback an application receives from users and blocks apps that are faring especially poorly (since they’re probably spammy). But the bot was acting more aggressive than it should have been, and developers didn’t have a way to tell how frequently users were blocking their app updates in the first place.

And Facebook is also taking a more gentle approach to app banning. Previously when an app crossed the spamminess threshold it would simply be deleted. Now Facebook will only cut off the notification channel that’s producing the spam. And if an application is deemed to be spammy across multiple notification channels, Facebook is also introducing a new ‘disabled’ mode that will still give developers access to their applications, even though users won’t be able to use it.

 

Perhaps the biggest news, though, comes at the bottom of the post:

In addition to the new Send button, Facebook is adding a handful of features to its existing Groups product, which was overhauled last October. First is the introduction of photo albums for Groups. Before now it’s been possible to upload a single photo to a group, and now you’ll be able to upload a whole set. These photo albums are unusual because they’re walled within the Group — only other group members will be able to see them (even tagged photos aren’t visible to people on the outside).

Finally, and most important, is a new setting that will require Group administrators to approve any new members who have been invited to join the group. Up until now anyone within a Facebook Group was able to invite any of their friends (the idea was that you’d be violating the ‘social contract’ if you started inviting people who didn’t belong). But now Facebook recognizes that there are some groups that should be more private, so you can require admin approval.

Phrases does nothing special to earn its popularity and is merely an application that allows users to express themselves through their Facebook walls using user-generated images and, well, phrases.

Currently, Glue has over 400,000 registered users and receives over 1.5 million new ratings every month, which is impressive for the bootstrapped startup. But will these new feature updates be able to save Glue from Facebook’s potential takeover of the social recommendations space? Glue’s founder Alex Iskold says that he is “flattered” by Facebook’s move to extend their Like button beyond the social network. In fact, Iskold is very familiar with Facebook’s implementation of its Like button and Open Graph API. But Iskold believes that the Like button is more publisher-focused vs. user-centric. Iskold maintains that Glue’s plug-in allows users to interact with their recommendations wherever they browse and on the sites they visit. He adds that Glue will plan to integrate Facebook’s Like button in some way, but is not sure yet how it will be added to the platform.

Earlier in the presentation, Platform Lead Bret Taylor rattled off another huge stat: Facebook users are sharing over 25 billion things a month currently. With the new Like button (and the other new social plugins, not to mention the Open Graph itself), and Facebook’s new partners, expect this number to surge. I mean, if Facebook is going to serve up 1 billion likes just today, they’ll be on pace for a least 30 billion shares this month, not counting any other method of sharing on the site.

This isn’t to say that building for someone else’s platform can’t be very profitable. Over the past few years we’ve seen some very successful iPhone apps, Twitter apps, and Facebook apps. And that success is what has driven more and more developers to continue building new apps for these platforms.

 

But you’d better have an exit strategy that involves becoming independent from your parent platform. Be aware that at any time, the rug can be pulled out from under you. We’ve seen it repeatedly in the past, and several times just this past week. Have a contingency plan in place, other platforms to target, other ways to distribute your product. Don’t want until Apple/Twitter/Facebook decides that they want to take over your core business: by then it will be too late.

Should you be annoyed that your URL shortener or photo upload service might become irrelevant once Twitter integrates those core features? Sure.

Hey, this digg connect seems odd! When i connect it says there is already a digg account with same email id.

 

That means facebook sharing email id of the user! FB entered into some special agreement with digg. Did fb made money out of our emails?

Not at all. Facebook Connect allows application developers to match existing accounts by email hashes *only*. The actual email address is never shared, but a one way hash can be matched so that an FBC application can recognize the user only if they already have previous knowledge of that user’s email address.

 

The hashes are described in the API’s Connect.registerUsers() method, which you can view here: http://wiki.dev...t.registerUsers

 

Cheers,

 

Bill Shupp

Of course, the best part of the video comes from a Facebook engineer named Putnam as he describes Mark Zuckerberg’s initial reaction to the Video idea. Just watch the clip below.

Also be sure to check out the full video, though beware of the ridiculously sappy piano music playing throughout.