Hide Facebook Apps: Official Tool Coming Soon
Sick of Facebook application overload? Feeling like you're on Myspace all over again? The Facebook team has heard your cries and announced tonight that they will soon release a new service that allows users to move all but their favorite apps to an "extended profile" section.
I think a lot of users are going to appreciate this. I'm not so sure about app developers.
Rodney Rumford writes at FB app review blog FaceReviews that this will make the app developers' world a whole lot more competitive, since many apps spread largely through discovery by one friend on the profile page of another. It was via Rodney that I found this news.
So app developers are unlikely to be happy about this. Perhaps demotion of your app is better than having it be deleted?
Time to Throw a Party?
I don't think Rodney's concern will be at the top of users' minds, though. How will they (we) feel? As we read in our recent interview with an early Facebook user, which we think is pretty typical - there's a real backlash against app-overload, at least among long-time users. For some it's a backlash against Facebook apps at all!
On the other hand, many new users may appreciate the apps on the Facebook platform. Apps being hidden will presumably hinder our ability to stumble onto cool new ones. (Like this new near-Dodgeball integration into Facebook, for example.) If you, dear reader, weren't interested in finding cool new apps on the web - you probably wouldn't be reading this blog.
Maybe that's beside the point when it comes to Facebook apps though. They can be pretty annoying. I wonder how many people will move apps but still keep them and how many people will take this opportunity to delete them. I also wonder if few people will take advantage of the new "profile cleaner" and if in fact all of us just pile up detritus on these sites until we can't stand the load, we freak-out and leave.
Either way, I thought you'd appreciate reading about a way to hide Facebook apps - if only on principle!
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It is great that Facebook is coming out with this. But I would like a way to go even further with hiding the apps. Just give the option to be on people's facebook page and just see the persons regular profile without any apps at all. This is something I would love. No more super wall, fun wall, super fantastic fun wall.
Posted by: smojo | January 11, 2008 1:13 AM
As a Facebook developer, I'm actually looking forward to this release. I could be wrong, but I agree that this will probably make app development more competitive. Facebook is currently being overrun by crappy thrown together apps that look terrible and run like crap. The only reason they are put together is to gain a lot of users really fast and be sold. I'm thinking this update will help the REAL developers on facebook who's apps get buried by these crap apps by giving users a reason to KEEP apps that actually look nice on their profile. Who knows thou. Kudo's to facebook from me on this one.
Posted by: Steve | January 11, 2008 2:38 AM
That's a great perspective Steve. Thanks for sticking up for the good developers of the world. Don't send too many action notifications to my friends' minifeeds, ok? :) thanks for your comment
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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January 11, 2008 2:48 AM
I'm just sick of Facebook.(fullstop) They just decided to disable my account. I have written about it on my blog and I'm very upset with them:
http://www.kwiqq.com/blog/?p=197
Sorry to hijack your blog but I just think my concern needs to be addressed.
Posted by: Raj Anand | January 11, 2008 3:26 AM
I think this is a good way to give your facebook profile a spring cleaning up once in a while when this application is release. Simple is sometimes more effective than having all those apps on your profile that you may never use more than twice a year.
Posted by: Nascar | January 11, 2008 7:00 AM
Great, I was thinking of giving my profile a fresh look. Thanks with this cool tool, keep us updated RWW. :)
nhick
http://www.itrush.com
Posted by: ITrush | January 11, 2008 7:44 AM
Finally! Perhaps some people might now stop adding a whole truck load of crap to their pages.
Posted by: Andy | January 11, 2008 9:06 AM
Yes! Maybe I can start using Facebook again. Every time I log in there, I'm flooded with Pirate, Ninja, Vampire and app requests. I just gave up after a while and stopped bothering to visit the site.
Looking forward to this.
Posted by: Steffan Williams | January 11, 2008 9:36 PM
A while ago I wrote a CSS file to remove most apps from facebook. You can find it on my "Stop the facebook noise" facebook group.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6900992638
Posted by: Stop the facebook noise | January 11, 2008 9:40 PM
Woo! As a heavy Facebook user, I'm pretty happy about this. It's about time that the Facebook folks put up a fight against the MySpace-ing of Facebook. Well done.
Posted by: Dan | January 11, 2008 9:41 PM
Good! Finally. Does this mean that I can hide them on other people's pages when I view them as well? I'm about sick of pirate / compare me / quiz requests.
Posted by: Kevin | January 11, 2008 9:43 PM
In my mind, this still ignores the central issue: the fact that people can still choose to have 48 apps on their page, and there isn't anything to automatically keep you, as the viewer, from having to see all of them if the other user so chooses. From how it sounds, Facebook has basically just said "Hey, if you feel like moving a few apps without deleting them, we're going to make a tool for you."
Basically, it's in the hands of the people themselves to clean up their own page instead of pissing off everybody who tries to look at it, and I have a feeling that isn't going to solve anything.
Posted by: anon | January 11, 2008 11:43 PM
This wont stop us from getting emails every ten minutes saying someone has thrown a sheep at us, or poked in the eye or infact to tell me that my true love has been found! will it now?
Get rid of the apps, and i'll consider it a social networking site.
Posted by: Bayliss | January 12, 2008 7:42 AM
I also hate the Facebook apps, but there is a very easy way to get rid of them on the client side. Go read this article http://spittingfire.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/tired-of-facebook-apps/
Posted by: Facebook app hater | January 12, 2008 11:30 AM
It's a real sign of Facebook's lack of technological advancement that they have time to announce this new "feature" before they actually implement it.
For crying out loud people, it's a flag on a many-to-many relationship and a checkbox field on a settings page.
Why do we waste our time talking about these insignificant issues. When did our love of technology die to be replaced with a fascination in the mundane?
Posted by: PJ | January 12, 2008 12:39 PM
I rarely get requests anymore. Something I do is block the actual applications that I get requests from and once they are blocked I never here from them again. I have a nice list of about 50 apps I blocked. But now I rarely get requests, the only time is really when a new app gets popular. All I need to do it click the app block it and I will never hear anything from it again. :)
Posted by: Jason | January 12, 2008 1:42 PM
For me personally, this doesn't go far enough.
I really hate getting sent application requests. The vast majority aren't anything like fun, they're just stupid.
What we need is some way of regulating who can sent application requests to us, and what kind of applications we accept...
Posted by: Wayne Smallman | January 13, 2008 1:30 AM