Facebook to 'punish' bad apps - News - Software

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Facebook to 'punish' bad apps

July 24, 2008
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Facebook-to-punish-bad-apps/0,130061733,339290840,00.htm

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed a change in the social networking company's approach to its application platform when he took the stage at the F8 conference in the US today.

"We've made a lot of mistakes and there is a lot we have to learn," Zuckerberg said.

"We haven't done enough to reward the good citizens in our ecosystem and, on the flip side, we haven't done enough to punish the applications that have been abusive."

Facebook will launch a "Great Apps" program to give priority, such as greater weighting in users' news feeds, to programs that are "meaningful, trustworthy, and well-designed". Developers will be able to use its translation program to match languages to those used everywhere the social-networking site is available.

Digg, Moveable Type and Citysearch have adapted their websites to connect with Facebook, and a software kit was made available today.

A multi-billion-dollar "ecosystem" has grown up around Facebook, with custom application creators including Zynga, Flixster and LivingSocial recently winning millions of dollars in funding from venture capitalists.

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