Is Facebook being killed by its applications?
Now I have not as yet been involved in the actual production of a Facebook application but I have been guilty of coming up with a fair few ideas for them, good and bad. This post isn’t seeking to tell you what might make a good Facebook app though, or indeed a rubbish one. Just have a look at your home page and you’ll see enough requests for you to join rubbish apps as it is. No, this is more about the effect of this veritable plethora of ever annoying apps appearing to antagonise previously happy users!
Overload, spamming and the lack of information on function, use and privacy of applications are turning users away from Facebook and interrupting its originally site enhancing functions and user journeys.
Application Overload. There is a lot of it about!
Application overload then? I think so. Pub conversations and online discussions have turned from the usefulness of Facebook and how we can add value to users and to clients (which is still possible I hasten to add), to now being more about the conversation participants own personal annoyance with Facebook itself. And of course this adds to the awareness that apps aren’t always a good thing for a clients promotional needs and brand. Yes, we have all known this for a long time but the wonders of long term collective user experience backs this up to the hilt.
So what’s gone wrong? Overload as we said earlier without a doubt. Users will always vary of course. Some people are aware of the security implications of Facebook apps, others don’t want to clutter their experience, and of course their are those who think anything and everything will be fun whatever so let’s install! The tide has turned though and these apps are now annoying. The easiest example is one of the earlier ‘fun’ apps the pirate one. I didn’t want to be a pirate when someone else asked me to be one 6 months ago and I have not wanted to be one the next 10 times that I have been asked since. Apps can be blocked now of course but not everyone knows this.
Too many apps then and many users feel like ignoring the whole lot of them. Which means that certain worthwhile ones (like charities) or ones the user would enjoy if they had more information on what was on offer get discarded with the rest of the junk.
And people get sick of these requests constantly arriving and feel that the joys of Facebook, such as photo-sharing and the odd surprising reconnection with an old acquaintance for instance, are no longer worth the effort when we feel like we are using a program that is spamming us religiously.
This then is helping to level off the user base. There are some interesting recent stats on ‘TechCrunch‘ with comments worth scanning through, and the media is generally reporting a down turn in visitor stats. Facebook is being slowly tortured into popularity suicide by application overload. Or at least facing a user mini-revolution via the medium of the more savvy users turning their back on it.
But their is of course something more sinister affecting peoples use and perception that is directly related to the applications. The incessant need to have to invite your friends before using and the fact that none of these apps really tell you what you’ll get from them.
Pray tell me why I have to invite my friends to your application?
And this is of course the requirement that should get the proverbial goat of all users. So you have actually spotted an application that you would like to check out and see what it is all about. Maybe you have been enticed by your friend apparently voting you as the most sexy / wittiest / stupid amongst his or her friends. Here we go then, let us install the application. Oops no. You have to invite all, or at least twenty odd, of your friends first before you can use it.
Why? Quite simply of course so that there is a never ending snowball effect of users having to sign up. It is good marketing. The app provider is forcibly extending the reach of the application and thus its message and brand. But is this really good marketing? Isn’t this akin to spam chainmail emails for instance? Of course it is. I wonder how many users get as far as this stage and stop. ‘Why should I spam my friends with this when I just wanted to have a look at it and see what it was all about?’ More and more people are shunning the apps that make you spam your friends. And more and more of users friends are actively telling others to cease and desist from asking them to be a pirate or whatever!
A quick search on Facebook for the term ’stop sending me requests’ just turned up 283 groups in existence telling people to stop sending them app requests! The biggest group has around 3,500 members and I am sure I could find a far larger group with a different search term.
Well at least tell me what your application is all about in the first place!
You know the scenario, you decide to actually check out an application, probably as part of your digital research and not for fun of course. And there is a brief very rubbish summary of what this life changing application is all about. But they never really explain actually what it does and how it benefits you. What about some screenshots or a link to a demo video? Let me decide if this app will be useful and / or fun by actually telling me all about it.
And you need to access ‘all’ my data?
My final key element associated with the Facebook apps that is turning off users then is of course the fact that each app has a requirement to access your information. Obviously there are pieces of info it will need to be able to operate but the apps never tell you actually what information they need. And it certainly won’t be everything on your profile but it can access more than it needs. And what then does it do with this information after? Are your details now stored forever on some other server to be used as and when they wish? Our privacy rights and what we are signing away is not explained and users really shouldn’t be giving away access to their data and who their friends are just to have a look at what an app does. But they do.
Is Facebook being killed by its applications then?
It is certainly being severely diminished. Application overload, the spamming of friends when signing up for applications, and the lack of information about what these applications actually are before signing up and what they do with our data that they access is really turning a lot of users off of Facebook. This is certainly the experience amongst my friends and colleagues who are either leaving the site altogether or pay it perfunctory notice, to say hi to someone or to check out a set of photographs recently posted. Both of which are of course standard Facebook functions.
So change the way applications are built and presented or get rid of them altogether! Some applications can be very useful and fun but the vast majority are pointless and intrusive, And I have gone on for long enough so I won’t get into the sheer annoyance that is the so-called ‘Fun Wall’ application and its predilection for spamming all you know…
Popularity: 90% [?]
