This is a guest post by Vicente Silveira. Vicente is a social graph geek, with a special interest in the balance between privacy, security, and functionality on social networks. He is currently a Director of Product Management at VeriSign, working with Online Identity, Fraud Detection, and Data Analysis.
Facebook is serious about their platform and they are making sure everybody takes notice. This past Friday I attended the TechCrunch Cloud Computing roundtable in Mountain View where Facebook’s VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer joined the likes of Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff and Google’s Vic Gundotra to discuss the future of cloud-based applications.
Mike Schroepfer said that Facebook’s application storefront is growing at an impressive clip of 140 new applications per day. Shortly before the roundtable we watched five minute pitches from startups showing their cloud-based wares and one of the most impressive ones was Appirio’s viral marketing app, which spans across Salesforce, Google and Facebook’s platforms. This is the kind of buzz that Facebook wants to get around, where Facebook applications are fun, trustworthy and (gasp) even useful.
On the other hand, Facebook has been plagued by malicious experiments like the recent “Terms of Service” and “Error Check System” rogue applications. Although the developers behind these applications haven’t yet figured out what to do with them (maybe other than get some spyware downloaded), I think it is a matter of time before they figure out more harmful and profitable uses cases.
The problem is that Facebook doesn’t want to slow down innovation but at the same time they have to separate well-meaning and well-developed applications from the malicious or poorly executed junk. This is a daunting task, given the rate of application submission as well as the challenges in verifying a developer’s identity credentials and code behavior.
The Application Verification Program ($375 for businesses, $175 for students and non-profits) has the potential to address these issues and help users figure out which applications to trust. Although non-verified applications will still be allowed, there is concern that this could drive developers away or create a two-class system, but I’m not sure there is a better answer to this problem. My take is that if you are a developer short on cash or just not too sure about your application, you are best served by Beta testing this with your friends and their friends (who will trust to download your app even without the verification). Once you think you have something, then you pay the fee for the verification.
So far I haven’t heard of any developers that have been verified by Facebook, so leave a comment here if you have applied and if you received any feedback on where you are in the process.
I think this is taking a step in the right direction. Most people I know ignore all App requests now because of all the App Spam they've gotten (Vampire bites, What drink are you, etc).
The iPhone App approach which only lets "high quality" apps onto the platform increases consumer confidence in the apps, but definitely slows innovation.
Facebook creating a "trusted tier" of apps might just work. Who cares if there's a two tiered system?
Comment by adam — March 2, 2009 @ 10:53 am
Clearly something in the application process is broken. I hope Facebook would never approve an application like "Error Checking System". Yet, it was a live app.
Most likely, it was a completely different application during the approval process, then switched once approved. I see the same thing happening with the App Verification program. Clean up your app for the verification, then switch it back to spamming until the next review a year later.
Comment by Brent Baisley — March 2, 2009 @ 11:10 am
I have an application that has been verified.. kind of. They told me I was completely in compliance and would "continue to monitor your application until the announcement of the first wave of verified applications. We will notify you near that time with your final status."
Brent, that shouldn't be the case; they said they will be continually monitoring and will revoke your status if the need arrises (before the year is up).
The "Error Checking System" wasn't ever approved by Facebook; it wasn't in the app directory at all.
Comment by Brad — March 2, 2009 @ 11:36 am
the pay-for-each-app part of the system doesn't work for smaller developers; i'm all for screening the crap out of the system, but the fee should be a one time fee for the developer rather than for each application. it's just not scalable for smaller companies to pay per app.
Comment by Brenda — March 3, 2009 @ 9:24 am