The solution to the Facebook application spam problem
There are a lot of cool ideas floating around about Facebook app development here at Community Next, which jump-started my brain juices and got me thinking about that annoying line between “viral” and “spam” when it comes to messaging app users.
My colleague Teresa recently wrote about how App requests are starting to feel like spam. As we quickly found out, she is not alone.
My solution has been to ignore app requests. There’s a big list in my sidebar of apps that I haven’t bothered to reject because it takes more effort than it’s worth.
So Facebook should expire them. Think about it. Here’s the process:
- Your friend Gertrude sends you an app request
- You log into Facebook. The clock begins ticking
- You see the app request. It looks lame. You leave it alone.
- Four days after you logged in, the request expires
In this process you do not:
- Get an e-mail
- Have to click buttons
- Accidentally vote for Ralph Nader
How much simpler can it get? How about it, Facebook. Sound like a good feature?
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
The thing I like best about this is that it’s dead simple. Probably would take one developer a couple of hours to code. And it would make me feel pretty good.
Except, give apps only 24 hours. Not four days.
I like it. Except they should only get 14 seconds.
Okay, 24 hours is a bit longer than my original goal, but that sounds like more than enough time to me. And like Teresa said, it would most likely be the easiest and quickest solution of all.
I think I could live with that.
[...] of the better solutions to this problem that I’ve heard recently is to set a time limit for all invitations sent out. Basically, the idea would be that if you sent me an invitation, a silent counter would [...]
I could live with 24 hours. I thought that a few days would be more generous, and after all if they go away on their own it’s not really hurting anyone to have them up there.
But *shrug*. 24 hours, then.
[...] personally, I’d rather they do something a with the notifications before they go after the feed. After all, the feed is kind of supposed to [...]
or you could easily have an “ignore all application requests” button
Today i made a bookmark(let) that solves all your application spam problems
go to http://www.ignoreall.com and try it out
[...] while ago I made a post outlining what I think is probably the best solution to the Facebook app request problem (the [...]
[...] Still, at least they’re doing something. I’m still pulling for my expiration method. [...]
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