What I want to say to you, and I don't care if it appears for publication or not, is that your complaints about Facebook's new policies limiting app spam and presenting privacy options to users upfront are aligning you directly against the interests of Facebook's users.

Since you want my privacy options hidden away inconveniently so that there is a greater chance that your app will behave in a way I *don't* want, is there a logical reason I *shouldn't* despise you?

Please pull your head out of your code long enough to realise that everything is not about YOU.

TechnicolourSquirrel

We finally got our app out, just 7 days ago. And so far, I can say, the experience has been somewhat disappointing. Our growth is not exponential - it's painfully linear. Those app developers that were out of the gates early (and especially those that were in on it with weeks of headstart before the rest of the world even knew what hit them) - they've undoubtedly had a great advantage. Spammy practices with 500 invites plus email begging and other borderline questionable practices put them ahead. I'm envious and so are many other struggling app developers.

So, can new Facebook apps still work? It depends.

Some apps are made predominantely to lure users off to the mothership - their main site, where each user is worth a lot more than in the Facebook app. I'd wager a guess that for most apps, including ours, this strategy is not working out nearly as we well as we had hoped, naively.

Monetization is another issue. The simply-slap-adsense-on-it solution doesn't work, and even though there are specific Facebook app advertising solutions coming up, monetization will remain a difficult endeavour.

What are we left to do? Somehow I stubbornly choose to believe that if we make our app just so super good, it will become a must-have and one day our continued effort to make the app better and better will pay off. I hate to admit it, but right now it's not looking like it will.

If I were to wager a prediction - I think many developers will take the IP they've developed and see whether they can re-use it as a stand-alone site or widget, to be finally successful outside of the Facebook platform. It makes sense, and I'm certain that for many developers that was always a part of their strategy or at least a fallback plan, should the app not take off like wildfire. Personally, I'm just a little bit deflated that we do have to seriously consider plan B already, after only one week after the app was released.

With the number of apps increasing, the app tiredness of the userbase will increase and it's only going to get harder and harder to stand out from the crowd.

Let me close my report from the trenches with another aspect that may influence app uptake rate. I myself am new to Facebook - I got to it after the API was opened. Within a few weeks, I now have more "friends" on Facebook than in real life. Yet, I suppose that those that have been on Facebook a lot longer have grown their friends list and also have lots of real life buddies on that thing. In that sense, developers with the seniority advantage were probably able to turbocharge the initial distribution of their app via social engineeering. For a newbie like me it's a lot harder.

I too did think that Facebook has a good chance to become "the new internet". I still think that in some ways, but from the perspective of current and prospective Facebook app developes, I believe that the real value of having a Facebook app is yet to be determined.

PuzzleBee