
Verified Extortion - brett
http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/21/verified-extortion/
======
grandalf
Why is he complaining about Facebook when all the company did was respond to
user complaints about apps that behaved badly?

When thousands of people got daily invites to stupid apps, something had to be
done. Regardless of whether facebook had ever announced the verified apps
program, the new restrictions would make sense.

When you develop for a young platform (particularly a proprietary one) you
should realize it may be a moving target. It's far from extortion!

~~~
mattmaroon
They didn't really do that at all. Open up your Facebook home page and take a
look. Maybe you like knowing which 80's sitcom star each of your friends are,
but for most people the platform has just gotten spammier over time.

The new restrictions certainly made sense when they took average apps from
infinite invites per day down to 20. But dropping that 20 back to 12, then
charging you to get back to 20 doesn't help users in any way.

~~~
blader
I assume you're referring to the algorithm change around January/February for
allocations. There was a change to the allocation algorithm related to spam
weighting - it wasn't an across the board drop from 20 to 12. Allocations
actually rose for certain applications.

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buggy_code
Are people still making money from facebook apps these days? I thought it was
over a while back (and thus why the mass exodus to develop on the iPhone
although apple's approval process sucks.)

~~~
mattmaroon
Are you joking? The top Facebook apps make more in a month than the top iPhone
apps make in a lifetime. Even mid level apps, the sort that would never make
the top 25 on iTunes, make more in a year than a top 10 paid app on iTunes
does.

Try Googling for Zynga Revenues. The Facebook platform is orders of magnitude
more profitable than iPhone.

Don't mistake buzz for profitability.

~~~
coglethorpe
> Zynga

Don't get me started on my Mafia Wars addiction.

~~~
elai
The game that can be (and is) played by a script.

~~~
teej
World of Warcraft can also be played by a script. That hasn't hurt it's
profitability or popularity.

~~~
mattmaroon
Does World of Warcraft still make money? I thought everyone was on the iPhone
all day now ;)

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haasted
The article left me with a few "Facebook apps"-newbie questions. Hope someone
here will be able to answer.

1\. How are Facebook apps monetized? Advertising?

2\. What do applications use the collected user data for? I once saw a
description of the kind of access an application gets to the user's data, and
it seemed a bit daunting.

~~~
teej
1\. Advertising + Virtual Goods (selling "items" or "currency" inside a game
for power, pleasure, or status)

2\. You can't really "collect" the data. Facebook's Terms state that you can't
keep user data for longer than 24 hours. The original idea was that you could
use their data to display demographically-relevant ads.

~~~
rms
Also affiliate offers

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cellis
As far as i see it, for media/gaming apps there are two platforms that you can
(try to) make enough money to buy a small island with: facebook and iphone.
Both are flooded now with competitors, and not of the stupid sort, so good
luck...and await the xbox mobile!

~~~
teej
I don't think Matt is "trying" to make money on the Facebook platform with
games. He's already profitable and growing -
<http://www.bluefroggaming.com/company.php>

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adamc
Last line: "It could be worse, they could be Apple."

Ouch. And that can't be something Apple is looking for either.

