11 ms·

Why developers are leaving the Facebook platform

288 points by andrew_null 13y ago

hobonumber1 13y ago
Good read!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
Jacquesvh 13y ago
Thanks Andrew, nice article. Finally someone writes something about the facts.
krmmalik 13y ago
I couldn't read the article. i'm on my mobile and in most cases modal windows make the page unresponsive. People really need to stop using modal windows in this way if they want to keep their audience. /endrant
- golgo13 13y ago
  Nor could I highlight to read without some share widget popping up. Come on, man!
  - Nux 13y ago
    Soon we'll have to browse the web like RMS: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134979 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134979
  - wicknicks 13y ago
    Yeah! I am in the nasty habit of highlighting parts of the text which I'm reading, and it keeps showing me the share widget - very frustrating. I couldn't figure out why the share widget contains "Evernote and Email" options. Sounds like the author got hold of a template, and hasn't changed it since.
- reinhardt 13y ago
  I thought it was NoScript or Ghostery that made the site look like crap. After enabling temporarily one by one the blocked JS, it's still looking like crap!
andreasklinger 13y ago
I think the problem is bigger: All the big platform websites readjusted their strategy back to become destination sites. All what we notice (eg less impact even during new-feature-landgrabs) is just a symptom of this. eg: Twitter, Facebook, even Google (see search api), etc etc All started out as platforms. Now all of them focus rather on monetization on-site. I remember a talk of a facebook engineer who said once "facebook.com is just one of the many websites on the fb platform - it is of minor importance - the platform is the social layer of the internet". Back then I personally assumed their main revenue channel will become micropayments (which would go align with the platform strategy). But it didn't happen and i couldn't imagine hearing a similar quote anymore today.
- grinich 13y ago
  That wasn't an engineer: it was Chris Cox, who is VP of Product. (Though he started as an engineer.) This is actually a very insightful interview about how the leaders Facebook think about the company's strategy. http://on.aol.com/video/an-interview-with-facebooks-vp-chris-cox-325593472 http://on.aol.com/video/an-interview-with-facebooks-vp-chris...
  - apalmer 13y ago
    It seems that the correct wording is 'Thought' not 'Think'. Time changes.
    - grinich 13y ago
      In what way has this strategy changed? I think it's timing. You probably could have said the same thing about Google before they launched Adsense. There's nothing stopping Facebook from building a platform to run ads across the web. My guess is they've discovered the web doesn't yet have enough social context to sustain the kind of ads they want to provide. (Instead, they end up feeling like creepy hyper-personalized banner ads.) Because FB.com is about exclusively people (and brands to a degree) it's a suitable environment to show ads or sponsored content based on social behavior. FB is the social fabric for the web, but people still feel it all lives on their website. Quickest way to change this might be to try to own the experience enclosure. (Build a browser, mobile OS, etc.)
volandovengo 13y ago
I swore that I would never make a Facebook app 2 years ago when Facebook broke my app without any reason or explanation 3 times. Check out the bug tracking system on their developer portal, there are tons of bugs which they just ignore.
- earlz 13y ago
  I've personally experienced that, even with extremely minor integration. I wanted for people to "like" my blog posts on my scratch-built blog. There had been an outstanding style issue with their buttons a year before I implemented it. Finally, after my last round of trying to fix it(after having my blog just look subpar for 2 years), I checked the bug. Apparently they "fixed" it, followed by tons of people commenting and say nothing was changed. So, I switched to twitter "tweet" buttons. Integration took my about 30 minutes. No style issues either. I'm not saying I trust Twitter more, they've had some crap API problems recently as well... but I'm just saying I don't trust Facebook, not for a second.
wtvanhest 13y ago
Is there anyway to turn off the share buttons when highlighting text? I like to highlight text when I read, and the share buttons coming up makes the article unreadable. I'm probably the exception here, but that is really frustrating.
- bcoates 13y ago
  ||markerly.com into your ad-blocker config kills it.
stephenr 13y ago
"Move fast and break things" is a fucking terrible philosophy in a team that is building a "platform" for other companies to use. Its no wonder that even the features that are still "supported" never fucking work properly, if the developers writing the code know their little piece of the Shit Pie will be removed or replaced in a short time frame anyway.
- ceol 13y ago
  This is by far the most annoying aspect to me. The API constantly shifts with or without an email from Facebook, which means you're lucky to find any resource online that's up to date— including the API docs themselves.
psychometry 13y ago
The Facebook API is, by far, the worst API I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with. I'm not sure whose API would be second, but it would be a very distant second. They don't follow any kind of versioning, randomly remove or break existing features, don't respond to bug reports, and have absolutely horrid documentation. If working at Facebook on the Facebook.com codebase is anything like working with their API, it's a wonder anyone would want to work there.
- SpikedCola 13y ago
  A lot of large corporations are like this. It seems that the larger an organization gets, the worse their API docs get. For example, look at the QuickBooks API by Intuit, or FedEx's Web Services API.
  - hluska 13y ago
    Years have gone by and the mention of "Fedex" and "API" in the same sentence still makes me cringe. What a horrible, horrible experience...
- Ologn 13y ago
  Same problem for me. I put up a small web app that used their API. The only thing it did on my side was grab the Facebook user ID of the person. It broke, then broke again, and then again. Eventually I gave up and ripped the Facebook component of the app out and had people go straight to my web page.
- driverdan 13y ago
  If the FB API is your worst then consider yourself lucky. At least when the FB API has breaking changes they're usually a simple fix. Try working with a poorly documented SOAP API with a giant WSDL or a financial service's custom API that doesn't follow any conventions. There are far worse out there.
  - stephenr 13y ago
    Except when they aren't. Last major one that bit me was some functionality just stopped working - when you made requests to the URI they provided (that had worked before) in the docs, doing exactly what they said, you get an error. Now you're thinking, the error will help you solve it. What do you do when their documentation tells you to use a URI, and you get a 404 error? I don't mean once for a short time. I mean, one day it just stops working and gives 404 errors, for weeks and weeks. Open tickets, with no response from support.
mbesto 13y ago
Where are the numbers to support that developers are in fact leaving? Just because a few VCs in SV aren't investing in Facebook based startups, doesn't mean developers/startups are leaving in droves.
- arindone 13y ago
  Agreed - yet another article on HN that's all hearsay and uses no data to back it up (I actually love HN, but this trend, especially among a group that's supposed to be very technical, is often disheartening)
  - prostoalex 13y ago
    Headline #1 http://bayareaquarterlife.tumblr.com/post/29540504926/reading-hacker-news-as-a-non-cs-liberal-arts http://bayareaquarterlife.tumblr.com/post/29540504926/readin...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
freshfunk 13y ago
Most of what was written here is true of all platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, iOS and Android. - In the beginning, there are few rules and so it's the wild west. Developers see what they can get away with. - As time goes on, platforms look at what uses of it pose a key threat to their core product (e.g. social graph, twitter client, payment platform, third-party engines, etc.) Those threats will be extinguished. Developers dependent on those key threats will be burned as they get shut down. - Ad rates when the market is empty will always be cheaper than when the market becomes crowded. - Competition makes it harder for smaller devs to survive. Remember the days when you could be an indie developer and have a chance at succeeding on iOS? Now all the big guys chart and the small guys don't make squat. - The part about mobile is true but this is affecting ALL web platforms, not just FB. Yes, Supercell got a huge investment but they are the exception, not the rule. They are the "Zynga of iOS" if you will (in the context of success/investment). The question is whether we'll see more of these kind of investments. Given that games is a hits-based business, I'm guessing it'll still be pretty rare.
- frenchy 13y ago
  Some of that is only true with closed and proprietary platforms. The over-crowding issue is true on all platforms. Other that that though, these aren't really true with Android apps (as far as I know), or firefox plugins.
shmerl 13y ago
Because FB are privacy disrespecting? That's a good enough reason to leave it for developers and users alike.
orangethirty 13y ago
I have seen an increase in Facebook platform integration. From small businesses looking to get an advantage over the competition. Its no longer about some social media app. Now its about Mary's Pizza, and how they want to spam the feed of their clients whenever they order. It works.
davedx 13y ago
Why developers are leaving blogs and websites that throw up popup windows like it's 1997: Because it's incredibly irritating; Because it interrupts you when you've just started to read; Because the popup-tastic 90's are a time nobody wants to relive; Because (in this case), closing the popup actually seemed to reset the scroll location too; Because it can totally FU browsing on mobile; (but who cares about mobile anyway? We're supporting people from 1997 maaan!) Because it's obnoxious. I decided a few weeks ago that I would no longer read any sites, articles or blogs that do this. I am Jack's bounce rate.
- nwh 13y ago
  Begging people to sign up to your email newsletter in the first few seconds on a page is a little reckless too. The only impression of the page isn't from their quality content, but that they want to spam me.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  What irked me a bit was that I had scrolled down to keep reading, but the pop up forced me back to the top.
- benihana 13y ago
  >Because (in this case), closing the popup actually seemed to reset the scroll location too He doesn't stop propagation on the click event, which causes the # to be appended to the url and the scroll to reset to the top of the page. Basic jQuery, that.
- sageikosa 13y ago
  I close pop-ups by inspecting and removing the element, I have no desire to provide click feedback.
  - nwh 13y ago
    Sounds like you need to use Ghostery to nuke all those analytics scripts automatically.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
manishsharan 13y ago
Developers are leaving Facebook platform because people are sick of third party apps on Facebook. When I visited my dad, I spent an hour getting rid of all the spammy apps that were clogging his newsfeed. There is little value provided by those apps to most people I know. And as for Facebook itself , I have spent thousands of dollars buying stuff online -- books, bags , h/w , s/w,etc., and yet when I login to Facebook, I am greeted with ads for match.com ads or other dating sites. Note to Facebook: there is no point showing dating ads to people who are searching for deals on Graco , Lego and miscellaneous school supplies.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  Yeah, that. It's utterly shocking how poorly-targeted Facebook's ads are. Also how poor-quality. This is one of the wealthiest webapps in the world, has a nightmarish amount of personal information about us... and yet the ads seem to be bad scams or generic hook-up stuff.
  - mccolin 13y ago
    That the ads are poorly targeted largely depends on the entity buying the ad. When building an ad on Facebook, the customer sets their targets. Facebook will gladly sell an advertiser eyeballs, but it's up to the advertiser to choose the "right" eyeballs.
    - sergiosgc 13y ago
      That is a shallow dissection of the problem. It may be that advertisers are poorly targeting their ads, true. That, in turn, may be deliberate or a result of poor targeting tools. In any case, it is resulting in a problem for users (and maybe also for advertisers). If you argue that poor targeting is deliberate, then FB is prioritizing advertisers at the expense of users. If it is the result of poor targeting tools, then it is just bad for all parties (including, ultimately, Facebook itself). Anyhow, the problem is there and is clearly visible.
      - deleted 13y ago
potatolicious 13y ago
Why some developers are leaving the Facebook platform. I'm working on a thing right now that's integrated with Facebook, and I'm excited about it. The problem author mentions are all legitimate, but only applicable to a certain category of apps - and I think both users and Facebook alike are of the opinion "don't let the door hit your ass on the way out". We're talking about the spammy apps that try to take over your news feed, and that constantly overshare in an attempt at "virality". Social networking is maturing, and users are no longer lambs to the slaughter of these shitty apps, and Facebook won't stand for them either. Author complains about the lack of virality and acknowledges that many of the normal routes to virality are now cut off. Thank God. Let's be honest, when developers say "virality" they don't mean "something so interesting and cool that you must share it with everyone", they mean "something annoying, like that kid in class that stands up and shouts at people every 20 seconds". Apps that offer actual social value to their users, who aren't 100% reliant on Facebook for user base, are fine. As are actual viral things - you know, stuff that's interesting and fun that encourages people to share (see: The Oatmeal's Facebook feed). I for one am glad that parasitic apps are leaving the Facebook ecosystem. There's now more room for developers who offer real value to users. The thesis here seems to be "I can no longer be a parasitic bad actor in this ecosystem!", to which my response is "someone call the waaaaaahmbulance".
- sergiosgc 13y ago
  The fact that you think your app is cool enough to beat the current competitive landscape in Facebook does not change the fact that the landscape is indeed more competitive. The article is mostly right. Facebook is now a mature platform (not in a triple-X way). It's no longer the wild west, which is good in some aspects, bad on others. It is, anyhow, much less the land of infinite opportunities it once was. Again, much like the Wild West.
  - stephenr 13y ago
    If by mature you mean its just as likely to shit its pants and call you a harlot, as give you a cookie, like some 102 year old dementia patient, then yet I agree completely.
  - 13y ago
nbashaw 13y ago
Whoops, site looks down for me. In the meantime, here's a gist with the blog post text in it: https://gist.github.com/nbashaw/5437100 https://gist.github.com/nbashaw/5437100
nostrademons 13y ago
Something seems off about the premise of the article, and I think it's that you should start developing with a platform in mind at all. If you want to actually build a business, wouldn't it be better to start with a problem and figure out how to solve that, and then the platform is just a distribution channel you use to get your solution in front of the users who need it. Choice of a platform falls out of where the users who have your problem tend to spend most of their time.
brianbreslin 13y ago
David Weekly has a tough road ahead of him as the new Developer Program liaison at facebook. This article seems to focus more on canvas apps, rather than offsite apps (which is what I see more of these days). Andrew is right on most of these points, my company used to build tons of bespoke facebook apps for people, not anymore. Seems like wildfire cashed out at the right time.
jrochkind1 13y ago
Interesting essay overall, but I don't think 'arbitrage' means what you think, in " and arbitrage it against their virtual goods or ecommerce businesses." Unless, maybe, there were somehow middlemen buying facebook ads and then reselling them to someone else, that's not 'arbitrage' (and even then, questionable).
- apalmer 13y ago
  I definitely found the usage of the term arbitrage to be unusual, but it did logically make sense to use it in this way. I wasn't sure if the author was creatively using arbitrage in this way, or if the term already was being used in certain circles with this connotation. Guess I am so used to seeing word repurposed (especially nouns being verbified and vice versa) that i just filed this away in the 'maybe' this is what the marketing kids are saying now a days
  - jrochkind1 13y ago
    Are you saying to you it logically makes sense to use the word 'arbitrage' for anything involving making a profit, or making an expenditure that is cost effective? Really? Or something else? Me, I'd like to defend the notion that words actually mean something, and using big words because they make you sound cool, without paying any attention to what they mean, makes you a less effective communicator. Even if everybody else is doing it too.
downandout 13y ago
He left out an important reason: That Facebook can and will ban apps at will, regardless of whether or not they have actually done anything wrong. IMO, that's probably where the "uninvestable" comment mentioned in the article came from. If you have to wake up every morning wondering if your app that had X million users last night is still alive, that's a big problem. I know of apps that have been banned because malicious actors were using access tokens from those apps to do spammy things even though the app itself wasn't sending those requests. Facebook returns access tokens in the URL upon authorization, so the user is exposed to it and can use it for anything they want. Given nothing more than an app ID, any user can send spam posts and make it appear to have come from any app they choose. This includes Facebook-owned apps.
- kevingadd 13y ago
  Do you think the same reason applies for iOS apps, given that the same is true there? I suspect investors (and people running startups) are willing to tolerate a lot of risk if they feel the upside is big enough.
  - downandout 13y ago
    Actually, Apple isn't nearly as troublesome as Facebook is when it comes to banning. They have a clearly defined re-submission policy, which Facebook does not. In many instances Facebook will ban both the app and the account behind it, and they don't have staff to respond to appeals in a timely manner.
    - lobotryas 13y ago
      You are correct, unfortunately there have been times when an app banned by Apple can't be resubmitted because removing the content Apple dislikes would destroy the functionality or purpose of that app. This is mot a dig at Apple - iOS is their garden and they may do as they wish - but a general reminder that risk assessment is necessary when you build your business on top of anybody else's stack (be it Twitter, FB, Apple, Google or Amazon).
- 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
acabal 13y ago
From strictly an engineering perspective, I stopped developing for FB a few years ago because their API was like quicksand that you stepped in by chance because your treasure map was so bad. It would change every week, it was buggy, poor or no documentation, different standards coming and going every week with no signal as to which one FB would settle on, and no warning when their changes would break things. Maybe things have improved since then, but I left that experience so scarred that I'm never touching their dev tools again.
- masterleep 13y ago
  I agree with you on that. The Facebook platform exceeded even Windows in the level of developer displeasure and brain damage from working with it.
  - bratsche 13y ago
    Maybe Windows isn't that pleasant to work on, but not in any of the ways that he was describing. Windows has always had very stable APIs. The basic Win32 APIs have remained stable and constant for an insanely long period of time; there was plenty of churn in what was the recommended way to write an app (Win32 -> MFC -> .NET), but those are essentially higher levels and it seems that they've remained stable as well. It seems like Windows RT is the first time they've actually broken backwards binary compatibility isn't it?
    - signalsignal 13y ago
      Windows RT didn't break any compatibility because Windows RT was built on the ARM hardware platform. Win32 was just a software platform on Intel's hardware platform and won't work on ARM's hardware.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - bratsche 13y ago
        I think I meant to write WinRT instead of Windows RT. My understanding is that Windows RT is the new ARM-based Windows OS, but WinRT is a new set of system calls which replace the old Win32 APIs. Am I mistaken in this?
ThomPete 13y ago
I like the potential of facebook apps. Did this a while back http://apps.facebook.com/pinviewer/ http://apps.facebook.com/pinviewer/ I would be perfectly fine paying for access to their app platform if it would give me a more stable environment and allow me to access a few things I can't access right now.
kosei 13y ago
I think an overarching issue is that the goals of FB developers are different from the goals of FB itself. As a result, FB is keenly focused on keeping its feed and request channels relevant and trimmed down, while developers would rather use the channel to blast as many people as possible. That's also why Facebook is fine with breaking stuff for its developers if it makes the customer experience better.
candybar 13y ago
There's really just one major reason - people used facebook API to get access to people's contacts but now mobile apps can do the same thing simply by crawling people's contacts list. This obviates the need for apps to play within Facebook's rules.
zaphar 13y ago
FYI: That newsletter popup is really annoying. I only clicked through because it's a top post on HN.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
cateye 13y ago
It is a naive dream to think that there is a symbiotic partnership with Facebook. The power relations are evident and a Facebook app developer is at the bottom of the food chain. It is also obvious that you never can rely solely on a 3rd party (without explicit contracts) to build your business on. [Unless you can make a lot of money very quickly but than you can as well go to Las Vegas.] There is just too much wishful thinking. It is not that Facebook, Google or Apple is evil. It is ultimately about the interests and when there are confrontations you have to hold the right cards in your hands. Begging is not really a good business option.
lifeguard 13y ago
>platform companies like Facebook, iOS, Android I stopped reading right there.
jmharvey 13y ago
Many users are also "once bitten, twice shy" about using facebook apps at all. A lot of people have trouble telling the difference between a simple facebook oauth login and a full-fledged spammy app, and are reluctant to use the former for fear that it will turn out to be the latter.
na85 13y ago
Where is the mention of the users? Most people I know, myself included, barely tolerate facebook. Facebook is quickly becoming the platform of the middle-aged mom (because middle-aged dad is often lacking computer literacy skills) who wants to repost image macros that we've all seen on reddit three months ago. From the user perspective, Facebook just isn't a pleasant experience any more.
EGreg 13y ago
I am glad to read this because it validates so much of the trends I've been seeing over the last two years. More and more people are starting to realize that there's a need for an alternative to the Facebook Platform. This article is just the latest of many realizing that there's a big demand for developer-friendly platforms that get it right. In my opinion, it can be done way better completely outside of facebook, and you get to own your own users. I am going to write an article actually about this, and post it here. For now: http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21 http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21
jongraehl 13y ago
"a lot has evolved" for "a lot has changed" - faux-smart business english?
douglasp 13y ago
Hi, I'm Doug Purdy, Director of Developer Products at Facebook. I wanted to weigh in here to explain how we think about some of these things. Successful iOS and Android developers are integrating Facebook into their mobile apps. It's not an either/or equation. In fact, as of this month, more than 81% of the top 100 grossing iOS apps and 70% of the top 100 grossing Android apps integrate with Facebook. All categories of developers continue to build with Facebook (fitness, books, music, games, etc.) with over 10 million apps and websites integrated with Facebook. Notably, games continues to be an extremely popular category – more than 250 million people play games on Facebook each month, and canvas installs have gone up 75% in the past year. Most of our games developers had record years in 2012, and over 100 of these developers made more than $1M in 2012 (in total, we paid out more than $2B to games developers in 2012). With regard to Platform policies, for the small number of apps that violate our policies (replicate our functionality, fuel their app's growth at the expense of people's experience or expectations) we take action as needed. But for the vast majority of developers building great social apps, keep doing what you're doing. Our goal is – and has always been – to give people a convenient way to login to apps, create personalized and social experiences, and let people share the things they care about through the apps they use.
- michaelhoffman 13y ago
  So no response to the API quicksand complaints?
- richardjordan 13y ago
  I appreciate that you chose to respond here, as Dir Dev Prod, but your response just sounds like cut and paste PR boilerplate and appears a little tone deaf to the fairly reasonable points made and questions raised here about the risks/reward of the value proposition for developers using the platform.
- return0 13y ago
  People spend a significant amount of their online time on your website. It's only natural that developers want to integrate with you. The point is what happens after they do that. Look at some of the complain threads here for pointers.
owenwil 13y ago
Why I am leaving this website: A popover asking me to sign up for your newsletter.
eksith 13y ago
They're leaving the Facebook platform, because Facebook wasn't a platform up until very recently. It was a communal toilet of shoddy, spammy apps that did add any value to the experience or the brand. Good riddance!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
EGreg 13y ago
This post inspired me to write about our platform, which addresses this exact issue. If you're fed up with facebook platform, you might enjoy the read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5593216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5593216
michaeltsai 13y ago
I feel facebook has become less "cool" and more "commodity". it is still a great place, but its best growth is over.
jahitr 13y ago
I was working on the social integration on a project. The hell that the backend coder and I went trying to make work the js sdk for facebook was just stupid. We ended using a python lib for facebook integration. A real shame such a big company releasing a crappy sdk.
ralphos 13y ago
I think it's hard to argue with a lot of the points he raises. Certainly the 'lack of virility' is an issue and it's much harder to get significant gains now without resorting to a few hacks. The most concerning point I think has to be the case where Facebook denies advertising to competing products. That would suck if it happened!!! Again hard to argue with many of the points raised, but with that said I think there's still opportunity - just not the same as before where the likes of Zynga and iLike were able to get shed loads of traffic for virtually nothing.
groundCode 13y ago
meh....some of us never started getting in to the facebook platform :)

288 points by andrew_null 13y ago

hobonumber1 13y ago

Good read!

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

Jacquesvh 13y ago

Thanks Andrew, nice article. Finally someone writes something about the facts.

krmmalik 13y ago

I couldn't read the article. i'm on my mobile and in most cases modal windows make the page unresponsive. People really need to stop using modal windows in this way if they want to keep their audience. /endrant

golgo13 13y ago
Nor could I highlight to read without some share widget popping up. Come on, man!
- Nux 13y ago
  Soon we'll have to browse the web like RMS: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134979 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134979
- wicknicks 13y ago
  Yeah! I am in the nasty habit of highlighting parts of the text which I'm reading, and it keeps showing me the share widget - very frustrating. I couldn't figure out why the share widget contains "Evernote and Email" options. Sounds like the author got hold of a template, and hasn't changed it since.
reinhardt 13y ago
I thought it was NoScript or Ghostery that made the site look like crap. After enabling temporarily one by one the blocked JS, it's still looking like crap!

andreasklinger 13y ago

I think the problem is bigger: All the big platform websites readjusted their strategy back to become destination sites. All what we notice (eg less impact even during new-feature-landgrabs) is just a symptom of this. eg: Twitter, Facebook, even Google (see search api), etc etc All started out as platforms. Now all of them focus rather on monetization on-site. I remember a talk of a facebook engineer who said once "facebook.com is just one of the many websites on the fb platform - it is of minor importance - the platform is the social layer of the internet". Back then I personally assumed their main revenue channel will become micropayments (which would go align with the platform strategy). But it didn't happen and i couldn't imagine hearing a similar quote anymore today.

grinich 13y ago
That wasn't an engineer: it was Chris Cox, who is VP of Product. (Though he started as an engineer.) This is actually a very insightful interview about how the leaders Facebook think about the company's strategy. http://on.aol.com/video/an-interview-with-facebooks-vp-chris-cox-325593472 http://on.aol.com/video/an-interview-with-facebooks-vp-chris...
- apalmer 13y ago
  It seems that the correct wording is 'Thought' not 'Think'. Time changes.
  - grinich 13y ago
    In what way has this strategy changed? I think it's timing. You probably could have said the same thing about Google before they launched Adsense. There's nothing stopping Facebook from building a platform to run ads across the web. My guess is they've discovered the web doesn't yet have enough social context to sustain the kind of ads they want to provide. (Instead, they end up feeling like creepy hyper-personalized banner ads.) Because FB.com is about exclusively people (and brands to a degree) it's a suitable environment to show ads or sponsored content based on social behavior. FB is the social fabric for the web, but people still feel it all lives on their website. Quickest way to change this might be to try to own the experience enclosure. (Build a browser, mobile OS, etc.)

volandovengo 13y ago

I swore that I would never make a Facebook app 2 years ago when Facebook broke my app without any reason or explanation 3 times. Check out the bug tracking system on their developer portal, there are tons of bugs which they just ignore.

earlz 13y ago
I've personally experienced that, even with extremely minor integration. I wanted for people to "like" my blog posts on my scratch-built blog. There had been an outstanding style issue with their buttons a year before I implemented it. Finally, after my last round of trying to fix it(after having my blog just look subpar for 2 years), I checked the bug. Apparently they "fixed" it, followed by tons of people commenting and say nothing was changed. So, I switched to twitter "tweet" buttons. Integration took my about 30 minutes. No style issues either. I'm not saying I trust Twitter more, they've had some crap API problems recently as well... but I'm just saying I don't trust Facebook, not for a second.

wtvanhest 13y ago

Is there anyway to turn off the share buttons when highlighting text? I like to highlight text when I read, and the share buttons coming up makes the article unreadable. I'm probably the exception here, but that is really frustrating.

bcoates 13y ago
||markerly.com into your ad-blocker config kills it.

stephenr 13y ago

"Move fast and break things" is a fucking terrible philosophy in a team that is building a "platform" for other companies to use. Its no wonder that even the features that are still "supported" never fucking work properly, if the developers writing the code know their little piece of the Shit Pie will be removed or replaced in a short time frame anyway.

ceol 13y ago
This is by far the most annoying aspect to me. The API constantly shifts with or without an email from Facebook, which means you're lucky to find any resource online that's up to date— including the API docs themselves.

psychometry 13y ago

The Facebook API is, by far, the worst API I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with. I'm not sure whose API would be second, but it would be a very distant second. They don't follow any kind of versioning, randomly remove or break existing features, don't respond to bug reports, and have absolutely horrid documentation. If working at Facebook on the Facebook.com codebase is anything like working with their API, it's a wonder anyone would want to work there.

SpikedCola 13y ago
A lot of large corporations are like this. It seems that the larger an organization gets, the worse their API docs get. For example, look at the QuickBooks API by Intuit, or FedEx's Web Services API.
- hluska 13y ago
  Years have gone by and the mention of "Fedex" and "API" in the same sentence still makes me cringe. What a horrible, horrible experience...
Ologn 13y ago
Same problem for me. I put up a small web app that used their API. The only thing it did on my side was grab the Facebook user ID of the person. It broke, then broke again, and then again. Eventually I gave up and ripped the Facebook component of the app out and had people go straight to my web page.
driverdan 13y ago
If the FB API is your worst then consider yourself lucky. At least when the FB API has breaking changes they're usually a simple fix. Try working with a poorly documented SOAP API with a giant WSDL or a financial service's custom API that doesn't follow any conventions. There are far worse out there.
- stephenr 13y ago
  Except when they aren't. Last major one that bit me was some functionality just stopped working - when you made requests to the URI they provided (that had worked before) in the docs, doing exactly what they said, you get an error. Now you're thinking, the error will help you solve it. What do you do when their documentation tells you to use a URI, and you get a 404 error? I don't mean once for a short time. I mean, one day it just stops working and gives 404 errors, for weeks and weeks. Open tickets, with no response from support.

mbesto 13y ago

Where are the numbers to support that developers are in fact leaving? Just because a few VCs in SV aren't investing in Facebook based startups, doesn't mean developers/startups are leaving in droves.

arindone 13y ago
Agreed - yet another article on HN that's all hearsay and uses no data to back it up (I actually love HN, but this trend, especially among a group that's supposed to be very technical, is often disheartening)
- prostoalex 13y ago
  Headline #1 http://bayareaquarterlife.tumblr.com/post/29540504926/reading-hacker-news-as-a-non-cs-liberal-arts http://bayareaquarterlife.tumblr.com/post/29540504926/readin...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

freshfunk 13y ago

Most of what was written here is true of all platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, iOS and Android. - In the beginning, there are few rules and so it's the wild west. Developers see what they can get away with. - As time goes on, platforms look at what uses of it pose a key threat to their core product (e.g. social graph, twitter client, payment platform, third-party engines, etc.) Those threats will be extinguished. Developers dependent on those key threats will be burned as they get shut down. - Ad rates when the market is empty will always be cheaper than when the market becomes crowded. - Competition makes it harder for smaller devs to survive. Remember the days when you could be an indie developer and have a chance at succeeding on iOS? Now all the big guys chart and the small guys don't make squat. - The part about mobile is true but this is affecting ALL web platforms, not just FB. Yes, Supercell got a huge investment but they are the exception, not the rule. They are the "Zynga of iOS" if you will (in the context of success/investment). The question is whether we'll see more of these kind of investments. Given that games is a hits-based business, I'm guessing it'll still be pretty rare.

frenchy 13y ago
Some of that is only true with closed and proprietary platforms. The over-crowding issue is true on all platforms. Other that that though, these aren't really true with Android apps (as far as I know), or firefox plugins.

shmerl 13y ago

Because FB are privacy disrespecting? That's a good enough reason to leave it for developers and users alike.

orangethirty 13y ago

I have seen an increase in Facebook platform integration. From small businesses looking to get an advantage over the competition. Its no longer about some social media app. Now its about Mary's Pizza, and how they want to spam the feed of their clients whenever they order. It works.

davedx 13y ago

Why developers are leaving blogs and websites that throw up popup windows like it's 1997: Because it's incredibly irritating; Because it interrupts you when you've just started to read; Because the popup-tastic 90's are a time nobody wants to relive; Because (in this case), closing the popup actually seemed to reset the scroll location too; Because it can totally FU browsing on mobile; (but who cares about mobile anyway? We're supporting people from 1997 maaan!) Because it's obnoxious. I decided a few weeks ago that I would no longer read any sites, articles or blogs that do this. I am Jack's bounce rate.

nwh 13y ago
Begging people to sign up to your email newsletter in the first few seconds on a page is a little reckless too. The only impression of the page isn't from their quality content, but that they want to spam me.
alan_cx 13y ago
What irked me a bit was that I had scrolled down to keep reading, but the pop up forced me back to the top.
benihana 13y ago
>Because (in this case), closing the popup actually seemed to reset the scroll location too He doesn't stop propagation on the click event, which causes the # to be appended to the url and the scroll to reset to the top of the page. Basic jQuery, that.
sageikosa 13y ago
I close pop-ups by inspecting and removing the element, I have no desire to provide click feedback.
- nwh 13y ago
  Sounds like you need to use Ghostery to nuke all those analytics scripts automatically.
- dredmorbius 13y ago

manishsharan 13y ago

Developers are leaving Facebook platform because people are sick of third party apps on Facebook. When I visited my dad, I spent an hour getting rid of all the spammy apps that were clogging his newsfeed. There is little value provided by those apps to most people I know. And as for Facebook itself , I have spent thousands of dollars buying stuff online -- books, bags , h/w , s/w,etc., and yet when I login to Facebook, I am greeted with ads for match.com ads or other dating sites. Note to Facebook: there is no point showing dating ads to people who are searching for deals on Graco , Lego and miscellaneous school supplies.

Pxtl 13y ago
Yeah, that. It's utterly shocking how poorly-targeted Facebook's ads are. Also how poor-quality. This is one of the wealthiest webapps in the world, has a nightmarish amount of personal information about us... and yet the ads seem to be bad scams or generic hook-up stuff.
- mccolin 13y ago
  That the ads are poorly targeted largely depends on the entity buying the ad. When building an ad on Facebook, the customer sets their targets. Facebook will gladly sell an advertiser eyeballs, but it's up to the advertiser to choose the "right" eyeballs.
  - sergiosgc 13y ago
    That is a shallow dissection of the problem. It may be that advertisers are poorly targeting their ads, true. That, in turn, may be deliberate or a result of poor targeting tools. In any case, it is resulting in a problem for users (and maybe also for advertisers). If you argue that poor targeting is deliberate, then FB is prioritizing advertisers at the expense of users. If it is the result of poor targeting tools, then it is just bad for all parties (including, ultimately, Facebook itself). Anyhow, the problem is there and is clearly visible.
    - deleted 13y ago

potatolicious 13y ago

Why some developers are leaving the Facebook platform. I'm working on a thing right now that's integrated with Facebook, and I'm excited about it. The problem author mentions are all legitimate, but only applicable to a certain category of apps - and I think both users and Facebook alike are of the opinion "don't let the door hit your ass on the way out". We're talking about the spammy apps that try to take over your news feed, and that constantly overshare in an attempt at "virality". Social networking is maturing, and users are no longer lambs to the slaughter of these shitty apps, and Facebook won't stand for them either. Author complains about the lack of virality and acknowledges that many of the normal routes to virality are now cut off. Thank God. Let's be honest, when developers say "virality" they don't mean "something so interesting and cool that you must share it with everyone", they mean "something annoying, like that kid in class that stands up and shouts at people every 20 seconds". Apps that offer actual social value to their users, who aren't 100% reliant on Facebook for user base, are fine. As are actual viral things - you know, stuff that's interesting and fun that encourages people to share (see: The Oatmeal's Facebook feed). I for one am glad that parasitic apps are leaving the Facebook ecosystem. There's now more room for developers who offer real value to users. The thesis here seems to be "I can no longer be a parasitic bad actor in this ecosystem!", to which my response is "someone call the waaaaaahmbulance".

sergiosgc 13y ago
The fact that you think your app is cool enough to beat the current competitive landscape in Facebook does not change the fact that the landscape is indeed more competitive. The article is mostly right. Facebook is now a mature platform (not in a triple-X way). It's no longer the wild west, which is good in some aspects, bad on others. It is, anyhow, much less the land of infinite opportunities it once was. Again, much like the Wild West.
- stephenr 13y ago
  If by mature you mean its just as likely to shit its pants and call you a harlot, as give you a cookie, like some 102 year old dementia patient, then yet I agree completely.
- 13y ago

nbashaw 13y ago

Whoops, site looks down for me. In the meantime, here's a gist with the blog post text in it: https://gist.github.com/nbashaw/5437100 https://gist.github.com/nbashaw/5437100

nostrademons 13y ago

Something seems off about the premise of the article, and I think it's that you should start developing with a platform in mind at all. If you want to actually build a business, wouldn't it be better to start with a problem and figure out how to solve that, and then the platform is just a distribution channel you use to get your solution in front of the users who need it. Choice of a platform falls out of where the users who have your problem tend to spend most of their time.

brianbreslin 13y ago

David Weekly has a tough road ahead of him as the new Developer Program liaison at facebook. This article seems to focus more on canvas apps, rather than offsite apps (which is what I see more of these days). Andrew is right on most of these points, my company used to build tons of bespoke facebook apps for people, not anymore. Seems like wildfire cashed out at the right time.

jrochkind1 13y ago

Interesting essay overall, but I don't think 'arbitrage' means what you think, in " and arbitrage it against their virtual goods or ecommerce businesses." Unless, maybe, there were somehow middlemen buying facebook ads and then reselling them to someone else, that's not 'arbitrage' (and even then, questionable).

apalmer 13y ago
I definitely found the usage of the term arbitrage to be unusual, but it did logically make sense to use it in this way. I wasn't sure if the author was creatively using arbitrage in this way, or if the term already was being used in certain circles with this connotation. Guess I am so used to seeing word repurposed (especially nouns being verbified and vice versa) that i just filed this away in the 'maybe' this is what the marketing kids are saying now a days
- jrochkind1 13y ago
  Are you saying to you it logically makes sense to use the word 'arbitrage' for anything involving making a profit, or making an expenditure that is cost effective? Really? Or something else? Me, I'd like to defend the notion that words actually mean something, and using big words because they make you sound cool, without paying any attention to what they mean, makes you a less effective communicator. Even if everybody else is doing it too.

downandout 13y ago

He left out an important reason: That Facebook can and will ban apps at will, regardless of whether or not they have actually done anything wrong. IMO, that's probably where the "uninvestable" comment mentioned in the article came from. If you have to wake up every morning wondering if your app that had X million users last night is still alive, that's a big problem. I know of apps that have been banned because malicious actors were using access tokens from those apps to do spammy things even though the app itself wasn't sending those requests. Facebook returns access tokens in the URL upon authorization, so the user is exposed to it and can use it for anything they want. Given nothing more than an app ID, any user can send spam posts and make it appear to have come from any app they choose. This includes Facebook-owned apps.

kevingadd 13y ago
Do you think the same reason applies for iOS apps, given that the same is true there? I suspect investors (and people running startups) are willing to tolerate a lot of risk if they feel the upside is big enough.
- downandout 13y ago
  Actually, Apple isn't nearly as troublesome as Facebook is when it comes to banning. They have a clearly defined re-submission policy, which Facebook does not. In many instances Facebook will ban both the app and the account behind it, and they don't have staff to respond to appeals in a timely manner.
  - lobotryas 13y ago
    You are correct, unfortunately there have been times when an app banned by Apple can't be resubmitted because removing the content Apple dislikes would destroy the functionality or purpose of that app. This is mot a dig at Apple - iOS is their garden and they may do as they wish - but a general reminder that risk assessment is necessary when you build your business on top of anybody else's stack (be it Twitter, FB, Apple, Google or Amazon).
13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

acabal 13y ago

From strictly an engineering perspective, I stopped developing for FB a few years ago because their API was like quicksand that you stepped in by chance because your treasure map was so bad. It would change every week, it was buggy, poor or no documentation, different standards coming and going every week with no signal as to which one FB would settle on, and no warning when their changes would break things. Maybe things have improved since then, but I left that experience so scarred that I'm never touching their dev tools again.

masterleep 13y ago
I agree with you on that. The Facebook platform exceeded even Windows in the level of developer displeasure and brain damage from working with it.
- bratsche 13y ago
  Maybe Windows isn't that pleasant to work on, but not in any of the ways that he was describing. Windows has always had very stable APIs. The basic Win32 APIs have remained stable and constant for an insanely long period of time; there was plenty of churn in what was the recommended way to write an app (Win32 -> MFC -> .NET), but those are essentially higher levels and it seems that they've remained stable as well. It seems like Windows RT is the first time they've actually broken backwards binary compatibility isn't it?
  - signalsignal 13y ago
    Windows RT didn't break any compatibility because Windows RT was built on the ARM hardware platform. Win32 was just a software platform on Intel's hardware platform and won't work on ARM's hardware.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - bratsche 13y ago
      I think I meant to write WinRT instead of Windows RT. My understanding is that Windows RT is the new ARM-based Windows OS, but WinRT is a new set of system calls which replace the old Win32 APIs. Am I mistaken in this?

ThomPete 13y ago

I like the potential of facebook apps. Did this a while back http://apps.facebook.com/pinviewer/ http://apps.facebook.com/pinviewer/ I would be perfectly fine paying for access to their app platform if it would give me a more stable environment and allow me to access a few things I can't access right now.

kosei 13y ago

I think an overarching issue is that the goals of FB developers are different from the goals of FB itself. As a result, FB is keenly focused on keeping its feed and request channels relevant and trimmed down, while developers would rather use the channel to blast as many people as possible. That's also why Facebook is fine with breaking stuff for its developers if it makes the customer experience better.

candybar 13y ago

There's really just one major reason - people used facebook API to get access to people's contacts but now mobile apps can do the same thing simply by crawling people's contacts list. This obviates the need for apps to play within Facebook's rules.

zaphar 13y ago

FYI: That newsletter popup is really annoying. I only clicked through because it's a top post on HN.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

cateye 13y ago

It is a naive dream to think that there is a symbiotic partnership with Facebook. The power relations are evident and a Facebook app developer is at the bottom of the food chain. It is also obvious that you never can rely solely on a 3rd party (without explicit contracts) to build your business on. [Unless you can make a lot of money very quickly but than you can as well go to Las Vegas.] There is just too much wishful thinking. It is not that Facebook, Google or Apple is evil. It is ultimately about the interests and when there are confrontations you have to hold the right cards in your hands. Begging is not really a good business option.

lifeguard 13y ago

>platform companies like Facebook, iOS, Android I stopped reading right there.

jmharvey 13y ago

Many users are also "once bitten, twice shy" about using facebook apps at all. A lot of people have trouble telling the difference between a simple facebook oauth login and a full-fledged spammy app, and are reluctant to use the former for fear that it will turn out to be the latter.

na85 13y ago

Where is the mention of the users? Most people I know, myself included, barely tolerate facebook. Facebook is quickly becoming the platform of the middle-aged mom (because middle-aged dad is often lacking computer literacy skills) who wants to repost image macros that we've all seen on reddit three months ago. From the user perspective, Facebook just isn't a pleasant experience any more.

EGreg 13y ago

I am glad to read this because it validates so much of the trends I've been seeing over the last two years. More and more people are starting to realize that there's a need for an alternative to the Facebook Platform. This article is just the latest of many realizing that there's a big demand for developer-friendly platforms that get it right. In my opinion, it can be done way better completely outside of facebook, and you get to own your own users. I am going to write an article actually about this, and post it here. For now: http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21 http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21

jongraehl 13y ago

"a lot has evolved" for "a lot has changed" - faux-smart business english?

douglasp 13y ago

Hi, I'm Doug Purdy, Director of Developer Products at Facebook. I wanted to weigh in here to explain how we think about some of these things. Successful iOS and Android developers are integrating Facebook into their mobile apps. It's not an either/or equation. In fact, as of this month, more than 81% of the top 100 grossing iOS apps and 70% of the top 100 grossing Android apps integrate with Facebook. All categories of developers continue to build with Facebook (fitness, books, music, games, etc.) with over 10 million apps and websites integrated with Facebook. Notably, games continues to be an extremely popular category – more than 250 million people play games on Facebook each month, and canvas installs have gone up 75% in the past year. Most of our games developers had record years in 2012, and over 100 of these developers made more than $1M in 2012 (in total, we paid out more than $2B to games developers in 2012). With regard to Platform policies, for the small number of apps that violate our policies (replicate our functionality, fuel their app's growth at the expense of people's experience or expectations) we take action as needed. But for the vast majority of developers building great social apps, keep doing what you're doing. Our goal is – and has always been – to give people a convenient way to login to apps, create personalized and social experiences, and let people share the things they care about through the apps they use.

michaelhoffman 13y ago
So no response to the API quicksand complaints?
richardjordan 13y ago
I appreciate that you chose to respond here, as Dir Dev Prod, but your response just sounds like cut and paste PR boilerplate and appears a little tone deaf to the fairly reasonable points made and questions raised here about the risks/reward of the value proposition for developers using the platform.
return0 13y ago
People spend a significant amount of their online time on your website. It's only natural that developers want to integrate with you. The point is what happens after they do that. Look at some of the complain threads here for pointers.

owenwil 13y ago

Why I am leaving this website: A popover asking me to sign up for your newsletter.

eksith 13y ago

They're leaving the Facebook platform, because Facebook wasn't a platform up until very recently. It was a communal toilet of shoddy, spammy apps that did add any value to the experience or the brand. Good riddance!

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

EGreg 13y ago

This post inspired me to write about our platform, which addresses this exact issue. If you're fed up with facebook platform, you might enjoy the read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5593216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5593216

michaeltsai 13y ago

I feel facebook has become less "cool" and more "commodity". it is still a great place, but its best growth is over.

jahitr 13y ago

I was working on the social integration on a project. The hell that the backend coder and I went trying to make work the js sdk for facebook was just stupid. We ended using a python lib for facebook integration. A real shame such a big company releasing a crappy sdk.

ralphos 13y ago

I think it's hard to argue with a lot of the points he raises. Certainly the 'lack of virility' is an issue and it's much harder to get significant gains now without resorting to a few hacks. The most concerning point I think has to be the case where Facebook denies advertising to competing products. That would suck if it happened!!! Again hard to argue with many of the points raised, but with that said I think there's still opportunity - just not the same as before where the likes of Zynga and iLike were able to get shed loads of traffic for virtually nothing.

groundCode 13y ago

meh....some of us never started getting in to the facebook platform :)