7 Comments »There’s been a lot of discussion about the impact of the new design on Facebook applications over the past month as Facebook has rolled out the new design. Prior to the roll-out taking place many were concerned that the new design would crush application traffic and make it more challenging to obtain new users. Over the past few weeks I have been talking with developers and have received a bunch of feedback.
Today, Vasanth Sridharan concluded that the redesign has substantially damaged many of the applications. That was after taking look at a discussion taking place within the Facebook developer forum. While at first glance, we can assume that traffic is down for most, I don’t think the picture is completely clear.
A Change in Stats Confuses Many
As the new design roll-out approached Facebook decided to switch the standard application metric from daily active users to monthly active users. For many this made sense but for a few it made it difficult to determine what impact the new design was having as it became hard to monitor daily adjustments. Adonomics, the site which had once been the standard site for monitoring application statistics was thrown a curveball by the change.
Suddenly many of the statistics were inaccurate and it was no longer easy to monitor what was going on among the top Facebook applications. It appears that Adonomics has figured out a way to back track stats and fill in missing days but the statistics are still questionable. So how are we to determine what the new design’s net impact is on application developers?
A Drop for Some but Not All
Some application developers I’ve spoken with have experienced a decrease in traffic by 20 to 25 percent. Others have actually experienced an increase in traffic. While the forum discussion that Vasanth referenced is filled with dissenting application developers, that discussion caters to those critical of the new design. The title of the discussion is “Facebook Does it Again, Screws Developers Once More”.
Ad networks that I’ve spoken with have not experienced a decrease in revenue among their top developers. That means results are mixed across the board. One thing that is not mixed is the decrease in application profile views. The “boxes” tab has resulted in a substantial drop in impressions on the profile page. It’s not all bad though.
The new design emphasizes features that add value to the users. While the new design may not emphasize viral channels as much as it used to, times are not critical for most developers. While some may have suffered a decrease in traffic, the majority are not overly critical of the redesign. The largest backlash so far has come from the users, not the developers.
Stats from Developers Who Has Suffered From Redesign
Create designs that are extensible and flexible … common sense?
I can attest to this. My large applications that rely heavily on traffic from the profile are down about 50 - 60% while my app that does not rely on the profile is down as well by as much as 20%! It really hurt but now I just need to get creative.
One thing to note that I believe could have played a big impact was the application menu bar being shifted to the bottom of the page. I need to start blogging on facebooking101
The “recently used applications” is critical yet got yanked. I added the Twitter app a few days ago but because I did not bookmark it, I had no way of finding the app again. Fortunately, I remembered the canvas url.
I think that will be the #1 crusher of apps on Facebook.
Personally I am much less likely to add any new apps, as the controls for customizing access to different parts of my profile are no longer readily available at the start of the process and there's no guarantee the app I add will include them.
We happened to have the excellent timing of rolling out our application just as the New Facebook was being tested. Because of this, we don't have any stats to compare (old vs. new). That said, we had some other problems:
1) we had to go back and redesign many of the components so that they would work correctly with new Facebook - mostly layout and .
2) I think that they started being more stringent in the application approval process - we had to make some substantial changes as it was declined due to incentivized friend invites.
Point #2 was definitely the most difficult, as our entire viral strategy had to change. With that said, I think it was a blessing in disguise because we in turn developed ways to make the application viral on its own, not by friends spamming friends.
I guess we'll have to wait and see - if anything it just ups the ante, and makes it harder for the poor applications to spread.
The user experience is an important one to note. While I like the new design, I am appalled by its sluggishness and incompatibility with my most regularly used applications. Very polite feedback to those developers and to Facebook has not been effective. I don’t know much about programming, but I do know that the dial-up-style speed of new Facebook has forced me to cut down my usage substantially. I have removed about half a dozen applications in the hope it would speed Facebook up, to no avail.
With the changes in privacy settings and two phantom applications appearing since I was forced on to new Facebook, I will likely remove more applications as the site becomes less useful—why allow developers to have access to my information when I hardly use the site any more?
While I sympathize with developers, many of whom provided great tools and games in the days of old Facebook, I am not surprised about the decline in application views and, in fact, very surprised that the drop has been as low as 25 per cent for some. New Facebook is the virtual equivalent of new Coke.
We've seen a large range of users and developers criticize the new layout and yet NOTHING has been done to quell their concerns. Something is not right in the land of Facebook boardrooms and I suspect ulterior motives besides the often mentioned ad revenue increase. This is a blessing really, because I feel developers have more clout than us humble mortals in Zuckerberg's eyes. Less applications, less application use, less developers, less time wasted on Facebook watching ads tick over. Simple mathematics tells me they just might have made a bad decision.
All we can do now is spread the word and use Facebook as little as possible.
Nice post.