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Many developers were surprised this morning to find out about the new header that is now showing up on Facebook. Facebook was first testing the headerlast night and it went live within hours of us first writing about it. The new headers has one significant change for developers: mousing over “Applications” reveals 8 applications, instead of arrows to view more. This means the majority of applications will no longer have a link from the site homepage. Yikes!
Instead, Facebook has opted to direct all users to a new “Applications” page which enables users to see applications they’ve: bookmarked, added to their profile, installed/authorized, granted wall permissions to or given any form of additional permissions. While the applications page is nice, it means that those users that haven’t made the switch to the new design will be surprised to find many applications missing.
It also means that many developers could find some of their users no longer visit as there isn’t a quick way to get to their less used applications. You can arrange the order of your bookmarks and what items show up in your drop down via the “Applications” page. While it’s a subtle change, small changes on Facebook can have substantial effects on developers.
Unfortunately we have yet to find substantial statistics that show the impact of the new site design. We will have more statistics within a week as the new site design is switched over for everyone. For now, it’s interesting to see Facebook taking away yet one more channel for applications to get easy exposure. While this could be based on usage statistics (most likely reason), I’m sure a fraction of users actually clicked through to applications from the drop-down menu.
Do you think this new change will have a significant impact on application usage?
As you've said, only time will tell on this one. But I don't think it will hurt anymore than the format providing links to the most recently used did. If an app wasn't used recently, it was buried in the last iteration anyway. Now when you go to the “Authorized” apps - you get them all.
Oh, and you might consider checking the 615 messages you've got pending Nick
What happened to this…. “Based on some of this feedback, we're working on one more interesting feature to help make your applications more easily accessible to your users. We'll provide more details as we finalize the design, but it won't require any changes on your end.”
Facebook is screwing us! What about apps I regularly use, but have not bookmarked? They are buried!
For example, I've been using/building a dev app on a daily basis and it used to be at the top of the apps dropdown. Now I can't even find how to get to that app other than typing the URL.
Zuckerberg, Morin and others have let the hype fuel their egos and forgot the value of developers. Some days I wish I didn't have a large user base already built on Facebook so that I could move on and forget how bad it hurts to keep getting fucked.