Soon after the Facebook platform launched two years ago, developers became familiar with the concept of news feed optimization: modifying news feed stories to increase the likelihood of them appearing. The process for developers to publish feed stories has been modified significantly since then and developers are now welcoming a return to the feeds. While many users are complaining about the proliferation of annoying feed stories from quiz applications, the only person to blame now is a user’s friends.
News Feed Optimization Becomes User Story Optimization
Previously, getting a news feed story into a user’s primary feed was partly art, partly science, and mostly luck. Now the only deciding factor of a story being published to a user’s feed is their friends. If any of your friends decide to publish a story it will end up directly in your news feed whether you like it or not. The only way to block those stories from being visible is by blocking a user or an application completely.
The focus has shifted from trying to determine Facebook’s feed algorithm to determining what users are most likely to publish. This is best for both developers and users. Developers get to focus on creating applications that users are most likely to share with their friends and users get unfiltered access to information their friends are sharing.
Staggering Results
For those developers that optimize their applications for “maximum sharing potential”, the results can be staggering. Living Social continues to experience massive growth, surpassing over 14 million users, growing over 100 percent over the past week. Quiz Monster, the developers responsible for the surge in news feed quiz presence since the redesign, has grown over 44 percent in the past week alone.
Whether or not you like the application stories that are showing up in your feed, the only people you have to blame are clever developers and your friends, who chose to publish those stories to their feed. Previously there were few limitations on what feed stories could include but now Facebook appears to be clamping down on what is a Kosher feed story and what isn’t.
There Are Still Limitations To Feed Stories
Last Wednesday, in an article related to Twitter’s growth, I suggested that Facebook was planning on “eliminating call to action images from feed stories”. As of Friday that change was announced. Facebook states that “any call to action in a Feed story must be formatted into an action link”. So far it appears to be slightly stunting some of the top applications’ growth but not eliminating it.
A feed story can only get you so far though. If the application doesn’t work well, it becomes much more challenging to get users to publish feed stories. Despite the challenges though, many developers are celebrating the new design as it finally grants greater access to the feed, something that was previously impossible to get access to.
If you are an application developer that’s currently building on the platform or through Facebook Connect, you should spend some time determining what feed stories users would want to publish. As a user do you like the increased presence of feed stories? If you are a developer, what experience are you having with the new feed stories?
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Awesome stuff. Thanks for the analysis, Nick.
Comment by Nate Westheimer — April 6, 2009 @ 7:02 am
To agree with Nate, the analysis was spot on, per usual. I have to say that as a user, I find some of the feed stories are ok – the quiz apps tend to be uneven – some are interesting, some are not. The better constructed the quiz is, clearly, the more fun they are to take and the more likely the user is to publish it in their feed/on their wall. Some of the apps are hellishly annoying, though. The gift apps that allow a user to "send" someone something means the proliferation of almost identical feed stories as a user sends a "gift" to multiple friends.
Because users may not understand the effect of their actions on facebook, this amounts to feed spam in many cases. I really don't need to see Jane Doe sending an identical Easter Egg to as many as 24 friends. I have blocked users and apps when it has just become too much. Developers need to grasp this. If their apps end up alienating facebook users who have not opted-in to the app, that's clearly profoundly counter-productive.
Comment by Mariana Evica — April 6, 2009 @ 7:56 am
I really hate your phrase, "the only person to blame now is a user’s friends."
A lot of applications try to do whatever they can to spread and be viral, even tricking the user.
When you receive an email virus, do you blame the friend you received it from from accidentally opening an attachment?
Comment by Matt N — April 6, 2009 @ 8:28 am
I don't know about the rest of you, but I've gone to town blocking apps. I never used to do it, but they annoyed the crap out of me showing up in my feed, so I block all the time now. Especially those damn quizzes (Which 90210 character are you, etc.).
Comment by Lisa — April 6, 2009 @ 9:00 am
Well, first of all, my friends don't 'chose' to spam the twitbook feed – it's the standard setting! So unless one installs a quiz application, stops it, manually changes the application settings for said quiz on a different screen, and then returns, one will be spamming everyone they know. Not to mention that the 'application settings' themselves are broken, because applications do not require a confirmation to post to the feed, even if 'prompt me before publishing' is chosen.
The new design as put me off most applications – but at least I have a 'hide' option now, and I'm using it a lot lately…
Comment by Gerhard — April 6, 2009 @ 9:35 am
I do wish they would add a block this developer option so that I could do away with both Living Social and Quiz Monster in one go.
Still, blocking the right friends is the most effective. Better yet, make a friend list for people you care about and drag the list/filter above the news feed filter. Facebook then loads that filter by default.
Comment by Eric Godfrey — April 6, 2009 @ 6:26 pm
FB will die if it does not create a "block all apps except" setting, and default it to "on". OR better yet have a separate feed for apps so we can simply ignore it. People can no longer hear each other over the noise If this does not happen, the users will find another service.
As of March, anything a user posts is now only seen by whomever happens to be signed on at the time. Selectively blocking friends does nothing to solve this.
Comment by @gwoodard — May 4, 2009 @ 2:38 pm