Robert,
You missed the point entirely here. The application here is not a spammer at all. They were simply playing by the rule sets within facebook's TOC and going for the fastest spreading viral tactics.

"But like most FB apps, you can't install Likeness without sharing your basic profile information. And once you do, it nags you to invite all your friends to join the party and install the developer's other apps"

The app can't "nag" you to invite your friends. Your friends are the ones actually inviting you to install the app. Every facebook app has this ability.

Facebook is shutting off the email notifications (the ones that go to your outside of facebook email) very soon.

In response to why did they not think of them before: If you have any knowledge of facebook you would know the answer. They actually have very stringent privacy controls so no "data mining" takes place. They have been making changes to the viral notifications, and other ways users can leverage applications to communicate with their friends. For example:how many emails a user can invite to an app a day has been reduced to 10 a day.

Facebook actually has built in automated detection of abuse of their rules in the platform. app developers can see how spammy facebook thinks they are behaving with a green bar chart. They will shut off apps very quickly that offend. (this is nothing new) Facebook is far from naive and the f8 team and Dave are really smart and hard working people that care about their ecosystem.

Read more about this on my blog at www.facereviews.com

Cheers!

Rodney Rumford

p.s. The app you cite does not abuse facebook's rules. http://facereviews.com/2007/08/29/new-measurement-for-facebook-applications-is-greatly-improved/

rodney:

i'm afraid we're going to have to either duke it out or agree to disagree. I've installed about 20 facebook apps, and they all want you to invite everyone in your network to install the app. some of them try to do it every time you use the app. this may not technically be spam, or even against facebook rules, but it is highly annoying (and obviously it annoys other folks too, as noted in the examples I cite).

some apps also are fairly aggressive about encouraging facebookers to promote their apps in reviews of other products (offering incentives, etc), which is very spammish.

the data mining comment was from a facebook user, not me. but.... these applications do have access to a trove of information, even if they're prevented from storing it off site. not data mining in the strictest sense, but still data use.

peace out,

rxc

Robert,
No worries. We an differ on this issue. ;) Actually we are both after the same thing.

The ones that do it repeatedly are simply heavy handed app developers that users will eventually tire of and delete the app just as you did.

Their keep rate of installs will drop until they change the user experience and process of interaction. User behavior will force app owners to change if they have a brain. ;)

The incentive people are spammers and and old school internet marketers. I hate these guys. You can see this as I call out an application for exactly this terrible kind of behavior here:
http://facereviews.com/2007/08/10/my-solar-system-blasts-off-then-its-tractor-beam-sucks-me-into-crappy-ads/

I also did a video commentary on exactly this issue here.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=5772460174&subj=540680174

No need to duke it out. We are actually both on the same page here. We hate these spammy behaviors by applications. p.s. So does facebook & their users. ;)

Thanks for responding. I appreciate the discussion..

Rodney Rumford

I am very glad to hear of this development from facebook. As a facebook developer wannabe (I had an app I was working on, but then somebody built a very similar one), I can somewhat understand the desire to get as many people as possible to install your app, although most apps go overboard (even if it is not against ToS, the strategy of asking you to invite friends every time you try to use the app is still highly annoying)...
With the new metrics, hopefully we will see less of that. I think that the best effect would be if facebook displayed only the number of active users in their app stats, rather than the total number of installs (at the moment, they do both)

Maybe we should add another "sin" to facebook-style nagging: referring to your other work every other sentence...

Hi Robert,

Love your column!

When developing a social networking system, it is always best to leave it completely open, and then selectively close down the areas that become problems.

If you start out assuming you know what parts to close down, you could be disabling the very thing that makes it popular.

Don't lock it down until you know what to lock down.

Best,
- Matt

Robert,

First of all, as someone who wasn't quite a kid when the era of your GREAT video "Triumph of the Nerds" and the GREAT book it was based on "Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date" were being acted out in real time, I must say that your analysis has always impressed me.

You get most things right and you do so mostly before the rest of the world has picked up on them.

So, I must say that your writing about Facebook is a VERY GOOD SIGN that you are again ahead of the pack. However, I don't think you are nearly BULLISH enough. We are in the nascent stages of the next great OS transition. The one that started in 1984 with Bill, Steve and Steve opting for Graphical Operating Systems made billionaires of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Steve Jobs and many others.

This trasition towards the first Social Operating System will do the same for Mark and his pals.

In fact, I predict Facebook will have 200+ million users and be worth $100 billion by their IPO in Q4 2008.

Unlike Google who only makes money when anonymous people leave their site via a sponsored link, Facebook is all about your true identity and real user engagement. Mark Zuckerberg has built a site that offers the camaraderie of that Boston bar called Cheers -- where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came.

Everything big and important (but slightly broken) about the current internet has a chance to be re-invented and re-interpreted inside of Facebook as an application with the added value and power of an ever-growing social graph of connected users. In this sense, Facebook will swallow the internet and open the door for a realignment of the current powers that be (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, AOL).

For example, you can already see how facebook has dramatically improved e-mail by offering a constantly updated global address
book where everybody you care about can easily find you and by creating terms of service that effectively kill SPAM because no
anonymous person or marketing company can bother you more than once.

Facebook is the world's FIRST social operating system and the world only needs ONE such open platform. Therefore, the market power of the dominant player in this upcoming major OS transition will be HUGE. In my opinion, facebook which started in 2004 and is becoming the "first mainstream Social Operating System" is similar to Microsoft Windows which started in 1984 and became the "first mainstream Graphical Operating System." Just like with Windows, whoever controls the OS and whoever controls the dominant applications for that OS will make HUGE SUMS of MONEY over the next 20 years.

You can read the details about my views in the full post in my Official Altura Ventures & AppFactory Facebook Investment Fund
Group (see http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2392191727) and my comments to those who asked questions about this $100
Billion valuation (see http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2392191727&topic=2793).

To summarize the points in my post:

1. Facebook will grow to 200 million users by Dec. 2008. I base this on what they've already accomplished:

FB Year 1 (Dec. 31, 2004) -- 1 million
FB Year 2 (Dec. 31, 2005) -- 5 million
FB Year 3 (Dec. 31, 2006) -- 12 million
FB Year 4 (Apr. 26, 2007) -- 20 million
FB Year 4 (Aug. 1, 2007) -- 30 million
FB Year 4 (Dec. 31, 2007) -- 50+ million
FB Year 5 (June 6, 2008) -- 100+ million
FB Year 5 (Dec. 31, 2008) -- 200+ million

2. Facebook's valuation will be around $500 per user. I base this on the multiple sources of revenue that will flow to them

from:

2a. targetted brand advertising -- their Yahoo play
2b. keyword driven search advertising -- their Google play
2c. P2P e-commerce transactions -- their eBay play
2d. B2C e-commerce transactions -- their Amazon play
2e. Industry Alliance transactions -- their Microsoft vs. Google play

The nerds are at it again but this time they've built a social utility to help them get a date. And, if even Facebook itself doesn't work, then a few hundred million dollars worth of post-ipo stock is likely to prove a powerful aphrodisiac.

Thanks,
Lee Lorenzen
CEO, Altura Ventures (www.altura.com)

matt:

good point. thought it seems that if you wait too long, the problems become endemic and unsolvable (see ebay and myspace). we'll see if facebook stays on top of the evildoers -- especially when limiting what apps can do cuts into their bottom line (see below).

lee:

you enthusiasm is palpable. then again, you stand to make buttloads of money if the scenario you've described comes even remotely close to fruition. I think you may have gotten some 1999 dotcomishness on your shoes. I'll take my irrational exuberance with a chaser of skepticism, thanks.

cheers,

rxc

I USED to be on Facebook. I canceled my account about a month ago. I never really used it that much to begin with honestly, but ever since they opened it up, I was getting fake friend requests more and more often. It was becoming a daily routine to deny these fake friends. I got tired of the spam and just gave up on them. They went the MySpace route, which is not the route I wanted to take.

facebook is only trouble, trouble trouble, it should be closed out, its crazy place to be, the perosn who done that site should be ashamed