<rant>I got a few frantic and outraged emails, texts, and IMs from some friends in the last few days relating to a message from a few app developers, notably Honesty Box, saying that (from Honesty Box) “This may be the last notification you receive from us.”  Alarming.  I did a quick Google search and found an official Facebook blog post relating to this matter.  I strongly recommend that you read the post before continuing.

Initially I was disgusted.  Although understand Facebook’s idea, this seems like regression: I don’t see how progress will come from this.  For clarity, the Facebook notification system provided developers a uniform means of notifying users. There’s a key phrase there, uniform.  Following the thought process to get to a Facebook app, FarmVille for example: Go to Facebook >> click on FarmVille icon >> use FarmVille. FarmVille becomes Facebook, it only makes sense that you hear about your FarmVille->Facebook news though Facebook (whether on the site in the notification panel or in your email from Facebook). After today Facebook developers don’t have access to Facebook’s infrastructure to notify users, instead they may:

• ask for permission (through Facebook Connect) to get the users’ email address
• use a counter (similar idea to the iPhone badges, the little numbers next to app icons)
• use a “news” item (whether public or private)

In other words, the only place you won’t see Facebook app notification is in under the “notifications” panel (iPhone app and on site) or on the notifications page. (Side note: I LOVE the Facebook iPhone app’s notifications pane –very Android-y) My intuition is that most developers would prefer to email you as it’s more of an alert, it’s persistent, and they can deliver tonnes of content in that single email to you (more than any news item or badge can). This makes me think of Merlin Mann, and how this doesn’t flow that well (good-bye inbox zero for me).

Let’s make an analogue to this problem; everyone knows about the iPhone application notification system (actually called the Apple Push Notification Service, or APNS).  Introduced in iPhone OS 3 after much adieu and to the rejoice of developers and customers.  Let’s do to APNS what Facebook did to their notification system.

*This is a thought experiment; what I’m about to say is only for the purpose of demonstration*

Imagine a day when you get notices from your iPhone apps saying “As of [a date] you will no longer receive notifications from [this app]“  after checking this notice out, you see that they allow you sign up with your cell phone number to receive SMS notifications.

Before launching the APN service, Apple made sure that it would be used, that it would be API relevant, and that it wouldn’t kill them to operate it, and that users would be able to control which notifications they get. That last part is what Facebook is really missing, that and an easy way to remove apps from your account, but that’s another rant.

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I will close on a positive note: Facebook is doing what most companies (*ahem* Microsoft *ahem*) would never do, remove API components. This is a change, and change is scary at first (look at every time Facebook changes their interface) but this will ultimately be for the betterment of the platform, which is exciting.

Links:

• Facebook post
• APNS @ Wikipedia
• Merlin Mann
• Android Notifications [IMAGE]