Facebook tweaks bookmarks on the homepage

Developers better keep their MAUs (or monthly active users) up.

Facebook is tweaking bookmarks on the left-hand side of the page so that the apps users interact with most frequently appear “above the fold” or above the “More” button.

Whenever a user signs up for an app, a bookmark will automatically be created for them. This is unlike before, when users would have to make their own bookmarks. Of course, not every user took advantage of this. This may make it easier for apps to find a persistent space on a user’s homepage, but only if they interact with an app regularly.

If a user hasn’t clicked the bookmark in 30 days, it will drop below the fold. Bookmarks have become a significant way for apps to maintain relationships with their users after Facebook radically changed its communications channels earlier this year. The company has been refining them ever since to make sure they fit in with user behavior and at least support some virality for developers.

Facebook is also making another change to bookmarks that will keep user glued. Bookmarks won’t be able to link to external sites since, because as Facebook says, very few users actually create them to link off-site. That might hinder efforts by third-party developers to create destinations off Facebook.