

Facebook Just Obscured App Reporting - biznickman
http://nickoneill.com/major-change-facebook-just-obscured-app-reporting/

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ChuckMcM
Ok, here is a funny story. At Sun we had a beer bash every Friday. Every bash
there would be a drawing for cash, the cash would be a function of how many
workstations we had sold that week. Sell 10 workstations the check was $100,
sell 100 it was a $1,000 [1] etc. When the checks got too large they started
splitting them, had to be present to win. It was a great way to share in the
success of the growing company and it made for great attendance at the beer
bust! Then the SEC complained. They complained because the number was
proportional to sales and that gave out information that was material to the
company (it had IPO'ed in 1986). That sucked and sadly the drawings stopped
rather than just giving away money on Fridays.

It is entirely possible that Facebook was told to obscure the numbers for the
same reasons. Facebook's "value" is tied to its active user count and getting
app counts might provide enough information to out perform a less
sophisticated investor in the stock. I have no idea if that was the answer but
I could imagine it was.

[1] Example numbers, I don't recall what the real numbers were any more, the
key fact is that they were proportional to workstation sales.

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malandrew
But this is public information that has always been public. Publishing it
publicly does not create an information asymmetry with respect to material
facts. The Sun beer bashes on the other hand were private affairs and
therefore the information was being indirectly "published" privately, thus
creating an asymmetry in information available to the public markets.

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ChuckMcM
That is a great point.

 _"But this is public information that has always been public."_

But was it public and OK because Instagram was a separate company? Or was it
simply public and OK ? I suspect the outcry would be worse if they just
obscured FB owned Apps but that at least would have been a bit more clear in
terms of what they were trying to achieve.

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cyrusradfar
It seems like Facebook is slapping AppData in the face for reporting on
Instagram's drop in DAUs. When companies move away from transparency, it's a
move that generally makes me think that they are scared of us seeing a trend.

It's in the best interest of the app economy to have numbers to know what's
growing and shrinking and I think this is bad signaling by Facebook.

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tomkit
I love the PR spin on appdata.com's frontpage:

"In an effort to improve and enhance our services, we are launching new site
features..."

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HarrisonFisk
<http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/09/facebook-app-users/>

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biznickman
Wow, did not see that one!

