Facebook’s notorious reputation of making sudden changes is slowly dissipating. Facebook has just updated the iOS SDK, which is now available as version 3.1 with native UI. And this time, everyone seems prepared, for a change.
When author Andreas Ramos wrote a post about Facebook’s changes, his advice at the end of it was in fact a warning to ‘not rely on Facebook’ because it was ‘run by kids’ who do as they please and ‘won’t even notify’ when they make changes to their site.
Remarks such as these may have contributed to spur CEO Mark Zuckerberg to action, perhaps to prove people such as Andreas wrong? More concerning is how quickly the pendulum swung to the other side, with Facebook’s fast paced changes. Their two main goals are to move to mobile platform ASAP and to monetize.
Instead they now send an advance notice on their website to Facebook developers to prepare for any new change in the layout or feature are all put up to read on their website. Highly recommended is the Developer Roadmap page.
But the main issue is how well Facebook developers and users are adapting to the changes. Or are they not? Perhaps everyone became too comfortable and lazy coding during Facebook’s pre-mobile era. Even users felt disoriented. And by now the second and third parties should accept that such pace in development will continue because of Facebook’s very dynamic outlook.
While most of the changes are not too visible on the UI, their main pages and features have undergone a major upheaval. Such as Facebook’s Fan Pages, where in June this year, HBML was completely deleted and replaced by iFrame apps. On the exterior, as Facebook Timeline layout was enforced, so did Facebook Fan Page layout converge to become more interactive through the new ‘Message’ feature and provided better user control over posts and feedback.
Advertising and marketing also took on a new look, with features such as ‘Sponsored Stories’ and ‘Reach Generator’ to expand the fan base, thereby removing PPC (pay per click) advertisements.
The ones who are managing well are those who are reading up. It must be more than annoying because not only is it time consuming, it is also extra workload. However, it’s worth the trouble, especially for developers, because creating Facebook applications are a whole lot different.
It is always wiser to maintain a positive attitude, this goes for developers and users alike. Embrace change, and everyday will feel like new, better than a dull routine. Make the best use of their features and you can’t go wrong. Easier said than done…but with complete commercialization on the horizon, Facebook is certainly balancing it all pretty well so far.
Salman Ghaznavi is the founder of Avenuesocial Inc. a company focused on social media marketing and tool design & development. Avenuesocial is one of the premium Facebook App Consultants, and My role is to actively pursue a global strategy, create and help roll-out Avenuesocial social tool, the AS Pathways. The AS Pathways tool offers social media marketing and analytics with integrated campaign management (on Facebook and Twitter), multi-channel execution, engagement reports and user management.
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