Facebook has been incrementally improving third- party application access to its user activity feeds. Today, it’s offering a new interface (here) to streamline the process that developers go through to build, preview and verify each type of feed, as well as advice on how to make feed items more appealing to users.
The social network’s news feeds show other friends’ activity — like status updates or new photos — and its personal feeds on your profile show your own activity.
These are key ways that everyone interacts with each other on the site. The company’s redesign this summer has given feeds a strong new focus — you can now do things like sort feeds based on type, for example.
Today’s announcement is another sign that the company really does want all third-party apps showing up in feeds. Many developers have complained that only Facebook’s own apps, like Photos, and designated third-party “Great Apps” have gotten useful access to feeds while hardly any other apps have. Feeds were originally credited as a main way that apps were able to grow, when the developer platform first launched. Many apps then spammed users with items in feeds, however, and Facebook quickly cut off their ability to get items into feeds as punishment.
This template is the latest improvement. The company also recently introduced ways for apps to show various new types of feeds, like ones that are just one line long, and others that include links to comments.
Data on the redesign has so far shown a few apps doing quite well, with many more being badly hurt. The ones that have been hurt relied on users seeing their apps on friends’ profile pages. As the redesign forced apps into a sub-tab on the profile page that not many users seem to understand how to access, maybe feeds will once again become the main way most apps grow.
