What the right hand gives, the left hand takes away. At least it seems that way in the world of Facebook's schizophrenic support for developers using the News Feed. A few weeks back, Facebook made it possible for developers to add stories to users' news feeds even when the user doesn't have that application installed. It made for a nice marketing opportunity for developers to promote their applications via feed stories. Now, the Facebook platform is implementing a feed ranking system that will (among other things) demote stories on the feed where users don't have the actual application installed.
Given the massive volume of stuff that comes to me in my newsfeed, I'm somewhat in favor of this development. What would be most useful to me, however, would be a way to block all messages from particular applications — feed messages + invites. That would surely boost the quality of my feed and at the same time leave me with more control over what's in that feed without having to resort to an automated ranking system.
Sometimes it's the simplest solutions that make the most sense.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
