Facebook Trending

When the Facebook Platform launched in May 2007, it included access to a number of Facebook’s powerful communication channels right from the start (unlike some other platforms that have launched since). Access to these channels - profile boxes, invitations, notifications, and feed items - allowed applications to spread quite quickly. However, due to user experience […]

When the Facebook Platform launched in May 2007, it included access to a number of Facebook’s powerful communication channels right from the start (unlike some other platforms that have launched since). Access to these channels - profile boxes, invitations, notifications, and feed items - allowed applications to spread quite quickly. However, due to user experience complaints, Facebook has been putting in place limits on how much apps can use these viral channels throughout much of 2008.

While Facebook has not been explicitly clear in explaining what that feedback is, we thought we’d try to gain some at least anecdotal quantitative evidence on what users are complaining about. So we ran a Facebook Poll (which was really easy, by the way) to ask them. While the sample size was very small (only 200 responses, and disclaimer: this is not a proper way to do real user experience testing, etc etc), the results may offer some clues on upcoming Platform changes.

First, the question:

What do you hate most about Facebook apps?

• Too many invitations
• Too many notifications
• Too much clutter on my profile
• Too much clutter in my mini feed

We ran the same poll in 2 geographical regions to compare results between technophiles in Silicon Valley and folks in more “normal” places - in this case (lovely) Topeka, Kansas. The results, however, were quite similar (guess there’s not a red state/blue state bias either), so we’ve included only the Silicon Valley data below.

The results:

• Invitations are still the most annoying thing about apps (especially for women).
• Mini Feed stories are clearly the least annoying thing about apps.
• Profile clutter is still a big problem (especially for older folks).

So, assuming Facebook is seeing roughly the same data in its user experience testing, what are some possible conclusions for the Platform?

• Facebook will likely update the rules on invitations again. Per-user limits or stricter per-app limits are possible changes.
• Given that the new profile page is about to become dominated by the Feed/Wall, expect apps to be given more room to run here.
• Facebook is also solving the profile clutter problem with the new profile page design. Only 3 apps will have a box on the default tab. The rest will be, um, migrated.

Thoughts?

Poll data:

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Original source : http://xfruits.com/rkminc/?id=30775&clic=212365262…