Over the past 24 hours a new application, sponsored by SAP, has been spreading like wildfire: Friend Network Optimizer. The application tells users how active they are on Facebook in comparison to a segment of their social graph. It’s an interesting tool and it also is spreading by automatically posting feed stories the moment a user installs the application. The technique has effectively helped the application grow to tens of thousands of users overnight.
As soon as users go to install the application, they see the following permissions dialogue:
As you notice, the application requests to be able to post wall posts at any point. While Facebook’s new permissions process is much more efficient, and will most likely result in increased conversion of new users, users are also now required to grant all or no permissions to application developers. It’s an interesting decision by Facebook and it could result in a number of other applications copying the strategy implemented by Friend Network Optimizer.
After installing the application, users have the following story posted to their profile:
So far I’ve seen at least 5 friends in the past 24 hours have this story show up on their profile. So is this a good thing or a bad thing? For developers, I think this is great! It means there are still ways to organically grow applications without massive ad buys. For users I don’t really think it’s a horrible thing as long as Facebook is actively policing the Platform to prevent spam developers from exploiting this communication channel.
Ultimately this application reveals some interesting statistics, as pictured below.
The Friend Network Optimizer application measures your daily volume of status updates, wall posts, photo uploads, and “social activities”, a category which most likely includes commenting, among other things. It then shows you how your activity compares to friends as well as other people who have installed the application. You can also see how changes in your activity will adjust your ranking among users on the site.
It’s a pretty cool application for checking how active other Facebook users are and what’s a “normal” level of activity on the site. If you want to see how you rank among your friends, as well as other Facebook users, go install the Friend Network Optimizer application. Just be warned that it will post a story to your Facebook wall.
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Would really wanted this sooner
Comment by mejedda james — June 17, 2010 @ 7:04 am
Looks like an interesting tool for people who use Facebook for professional purposes. Not sure how useful this is to the average consumer.
Comment by Nathan King — June 17, 2010 @ 7:07 am
Facebook Policy : You must not prompt users publish a Stream story or use other Facebook communication channels immediately after a user allows access
Developer Policy V.3
You must not prompt users to send invitations, requests, publish a Stream story or use other Facebook communication channels immediately after a user allows access or returns to your application.
My Question is , if i use this technique, and after month or 2 facebook asks me to remove it , and i start working according to facebook policy , but in the other hand i achived my goal in growth of the app .
So how Facebook Deal with this Kind of Situation ?
Comment by Aaed Kayal — June 17, 2010 @ 7:47 am
Nick O'Neill… #1 on the leaderboard!
Comment by Peter Yared — June 17, 2010 @ 7:58 am
Good question Aaed. This aplication does not seem to colply with the FB policy. I wonder what they are going to do about it.
Comment by Peter Cabus — June 17, 2010 @ 8:40 am
It also violates these policies:
- You must not present users with the Feed form or publish a Stream story unless a user has explicitly indicated an intention to share that content,
- You must not use Stream stories as a method for users to invite friends to your application.
- You must not include calls to action in the body of your Stream stories (e.g., "Beat her score!" or "Can you beat her score?"). A call to action must only be presented as an action link
- You must not pre-fill any of the fields associated with the following products, unless the user generated the content earlier in the workflow: Stream stories (user_message parameter for Facebook.streamPublish and FB.Connect.streamPublish, and message parameter for stream.publish)
Comment by Phil — June 17, 2010 @ 11:01 am
Looks nice, not sure what it really does yet – still trying to work that out.
But I am not keen on the auto – prompting to auto suggest to friends – kind of think that is over stepping the mark.
Still its a great viral marketing campaign from SAP to get their message out there
Comment by GCsocialmedia Aaron — June 17, 2010 @ 11:26 am
Wow, I didn't know there was a Network called "friends". What email address do I need to join that one? @harvard.edu? No, that won't work. @microsoft.com? No, not that one either. Because I know there's a Harvard network, and Microsoft network..
Friends is not a network. School and work are networks. Morons.
Comment by Guest — June 17, 2010 @ 12:18 pm
Hey Nick — the link to the app in your post here is broken, goes to the FB home page. I can't find the app either. I even went to your FB profile to see it on your wall… wonder if it's been disabled already??
Comment by Mari Smith — June 17, 2010 @ 12:49 pm
Seems like the app exploded overnight, and then the FB marshal imploded it…
"Application Unavailable
The application you are trying to access is unavailable or restricted."
and
"Invalid API key specified
The application you are trying to access does not exist or has been disabled."
Seems FB didn't take kindly to SAP breaking with policy.
Maybe if they tried a method of promotion that was a little less "viral".
Comment by Daniel Bragg — June 17, 2010 @ 12:59 pm
To aaed – if FB pulls the app entirely, you've lost all your growth, and you will be back at square one…
Comment by Daniel Bragg — June 17, 2010 @ 1:01 pm
allfacebook.com It would be nice if you could update this story with information on the removal of the application or and information on why it was removed.
Also your website is super annoying every time a page is loaded it reloads. Kind of a pain when you've started typing a comment and the page reloads on you.
Comment by Nathan Stephens — June 17, 2010 @ 1:05 pm
Today the app is not available… whats wrong?
Comment by GangXtaBoii — June 17, 2010 @ 10:00 pm
I can't find it either. But I think the more important question is why? If the majority of Facebook users see this as place to connect, chat, hang out and share pics of friends and kids, why on earth would we ever need these metrics? Is Facebook about gaming popularity metrics or connecting?
Guess it depends on the user…
Comment by Nate Riggs — June 18, 2010 @ 5:13 am
Let the race to determine who can post the highest amount of useless comments begin! Seriously, what is the point of measuring this stuff unless someone has a facebook complex? Viral marketing can kiss my a**
Comment by rootdown42 — June 18, 2010 @ 7:49 am
I just added the program by adding them as a friend first. The program is accessible after the confirm you as a friend.
Works like described.
Comment by jorge — June 18, 2010 @ 2:21 pm
Hi All,
Friend Network Optimizer is once again live.
I’m the Technical Director of Fjord West, the agency that developed this application for SAP. The Friend Network Optimizer application has been reworked to be quite conservative regarding FB developer policy compliance.
We believed the direction we were taking with the application functionality was a tad aggressive but not dissimilar to a number of popular applications that will go unnamed. Based on the survey of applications out there we felt we were pretty safe to launch this app. As pointed out by Phil and Aaed, our original interpretation of the guidelines was obviously too “loose” as Facebook pulled the application. Lesson learned.
Would be interested in your further comments about the app.
Comment by Dana Dansereau — June 18, 2010 @ 3:02 pm
I hope You All succsess Dana , But Can you tell us how facebook deal with this kind of situation , did they send any email of warning , or you need to recreate another app and api key ( i guess that is wrong ) or someone from facebook take care to contact and to test again , we really want to know for our experince .
Comment by Aaed Kayal — June 19, 2010 @ 6:37 am
I was able to install the app by going to http://friendoptimizer.com which took me straight to the Facebook permissions dialog to install the app. FYI: the app doesn't automatically post to my wall – I have full control over what it does in my network. This might be one of the changes the developer (see Dana's post above) made.
Comment by Prodosh Banerjee — June 21, 2010 @ 11:01 pm
Facebook… is producing a dysfunctional generation. And this is just another useless social networking application.
“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. George Orwell
Comment by George — July 2, 2010 @ 2:59 am