Today Facebook has announced a new invite feature for applications: email. Yes, application users can now invite their friends to use your application via e-mail. When users enter their friends email addresses, they are not used against your daily invite allocation limit. I would say that developers should be enthusiastic about this but honestly I’m not sure how much of a value add this feature is.

The invite functionality within Facebook was primarily beneficial for developers thanks to their ability to send application notifications to friends. This new model requests that users enter their friends’ email address, something that Facebook Connect was essentially looking to accomplish. Users that are invited via email are taken to an “Express Registration” page as described in the Facebook developer wiki.

Honestly I think the primary beneficiary of this new feature is Facebook in that they get a few extra users through this new feature. Application developers could have asked for email addresses since the platform launched. Facebook has been increasing their SEO and using every tactic possible to get new user registrations and this appears to be one of them. Will your application be taking advantage of the new invite feature?

Do you think this benefits Facebook or developers more?