Facebook Responds to the Looming Facebook Fatigue

Starting next week, Facebook apps that get good user responses from Newsfeed messages (clickthroughs, app installs) will be allowed to send more notifications and apps that get fewer user responses to their notices will have the number of notices they can send cut down. Metered messaging based on user engagement could save the Facebook Platform from a growing sense of app fatigue.

ﾠNewsfeed notices are the Holy Grail for Facebook Apps, but the limits placed on the numbers allowed have always been a bit arbitrary. Allow too many notifications to be sent and users feel spammed by their friends' stupid zombie tossing, allow too few and application growth (and FB pageviews) are stunted.
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This new policy is reminiscent of the Facebook app metric displayed to users concerning the percentage of users who have installed an app who use it daily. That's supposed to be helpful in determining how good an app is before you install it, but all the numbers are so low that it only helps so much. The fact that MySpace will allow apps to appear on users' home admin pages is going to lead to much higher user engagement there and may lead to Facebook emulation of that policy on its Platform.ﾠ

This Facebook strategy of metering message quantity based on user feedback is a smarter way to leverage those types of numbers behind the scenes and should make a bigger difference in the user experience than the daily use numbers have. Note that this is only concerning newsfeed notifications, if you're plagued with unwanted app invites still - make sure to check out IgnoreAll.com.
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The Race to Be Less Annoying

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In an interview I did with MySpace CTO Aber Whitcomb about the MySpace Platform this week, it was clear that MySpace has no policy worked out yet for this sort of thing. Whitcomb said they would figure things out once apps are live and do their best to prevent apps from being spammy. They are likely to follow Facebook's approach as reflected in this announcement.
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Innovation in Platform specifics is likely to get hot as Facebook is no longer the only game in town. MySpace's Platform is based on the Google-lead Open Social system, meaning that apps built there should be able to live on a wide variety of other social networks as well. Bebo has seen big growth since releasing a Platform that's compatible with Facebook apps.

From ProgrammableWeb
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Look for more interesting new developments like the rumored Facebook friend recommendations feature. Social networking sites are valuable software, opening up to third party developers is a whole new world, open standards will let a million flowers bloom and this kind of increasingly intelligent administration of those platforms just goes to show that we are in the very early days of a whole new paradigm.