
Why developers are leaving the Facebook platform - andrew_null
http://andrewchen.co/2013/04/22/why-developers-are-leaving-the-facebook-platform/
======
potatolicious
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
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.

~~~
kosei
I actually think it's less competitive than it was a couple of years ago. Many
of the developers who were just making social games (Zynga, wooga, King.com)
are now heavily focused on mobile titles.

------
davedx
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.

~~~
sageikosa
I close pop-ups by inspecting and removing the element, I have no desire to
provide click feedback.

~~~
nwh
Sounds like you need to use Ghostery to nuke all those analytics scripts
automatically.

------
douglasp
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.

~~~
richardjordan
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.

------
acabal
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
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
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?

~~~
btilly
_It seems like Windows RT is the first time they've actually broken backwards
binary compatibility isn't it?_

Very much not true. Early on, "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run." They
pulled the same trick several times against competitors, for instance
Microsoft Word took dominance with Windows 95 because there was a period of 9
months where WordPress was not available on the new OS while Microsoft Word
was.

This was one of the issues in Novell's 2004 lawsuit against Microsoft for
anti-competitive behavior. The last I heard was an appeal filed late last
year, see <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20121123221716522> for
details. I do not think that the appeal has been decided yet.

There have been other, less nefarious, sources of breakage. For instance at
one point Microsoft changed malloc() to try to assign recently deallocated
memory if possible. The purpose is laudable - it is to push developers to
notice and fix memory bugs. However, it naturally caused many programs that
had been working to quickly crash. (Previously they would have run for much
longer before crashing - long enough to be useful, but quickly enough to
contribute to the perception that Microsoft software was buggy.)

Therefore Microsoft made a list of important programs that it knew would
crash, and for those programs only gave them the old behavior. Many small
companies did not make the list, and the result is that their programs
wouldn't run after that upgrade.

Microsoft's behavior here was defensible (in fact I like it), but it was a
deliberate incompatibility.

~~~
millstone
Oh, how delightful a slip. Run, the Internet is rotting your brain!

btilly surely meant WordPerfect, not WordPress.

~~~
btilly
Oops, you are right.

------
manishsharan
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
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
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
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.

------
downandout
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
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
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
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).

------
krmmalik
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
Nor could I highlight to read without some share widget popping up. Come on,
man!

~~~
Nux
Soon we'll have to browse the web like RMS:
<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134979>

------
stephenr
"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
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
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.

~~~
driverdan
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
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.

------
freshfunk
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
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.

------
andreasklinger
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
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...](http://on.aol.com/video/an-interview-with-facebooks-vp-chris-
cox-325593472)

~~~
apalmer
It seems that the correct wording is 'Thought' not 'Think'. Time changes.

~~~
grinich
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.)

~~~
apalmer
Personal opinion is facebook has definitely over the last couple years
realized they have monetize facebook.com itself to a large degree. Probably fb
execs still as far as long term strategy view the 'platform' is king and not
the website but it appears the length of the 'long term' has significantly
stretched, and they realize they need to focus on monetizing the website for
the next few years at least.

This is all conjecture on my part, no facts to back it up, but just pointing
out its common for a business to 'think' XYZ is the monetization solution, and
then after time and effort come to realize they have to pivot to another
direction.

Fundamentally I think a lot of these 'platform' offerings have come to realize
they cannot actually monetize the platform at the scale they would like, and
have as a result made the business decision to monetize their
'application'/'website'. Twitter, google, facebook, etc this is becoming quite
a common phenomenon. In fact the most stable platforms appear to either be
outside of the direct control of a single for profit entity, or else an 'add
on' feature of a entity highly profitable from another vector. If apple was
dependent on the app store for the majority of their profit, I think we would
see them having to do an about face, instead the availability of the app store
is a 'feature' but their profits come elsewhere so they have freedom to let it
operate as a platform.

------
volandovengo
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
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.

------
mbesto
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
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
Headline #1
[http://bayareaquarterlife.tumblr.com/post/29540504926/readin...](http://bayareaquarterlife.tumblr.com/post/29540504926/reading-
hacker-news-as-a-non-cs-liberal-arts)

------
wtvanhest
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

      ||markerly.com
    

into your ad-blocker config kills it.

------
cateye
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.

------
brianbreslin
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.

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

------
jmharvey
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.

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

------
EGreg
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>

------
ralphos
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.

------
nostrademons
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.

------
kosei
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.

------
jrochkind1
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
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
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.

------
orangethirty
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.

------
ThomPete
I like the potential of facebook apps.

Did this a while back

<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.

------
jahitr
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.

------
EGreg
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>

------
candybar
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.

------
eksith
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!

------
nbashaw
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>

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

------
lifeguard
>platform companies like Facebook, iOS, Android

I stopped reading right there.

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

------
na85
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.

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

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

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

------
hobonumber1
Good read!

