The Facebook Blog

Last Friday, we promised more information, so here it is. We've purposely been keeping kind of quiet about Platform on the site in order to give all the new applications and functionality—on our side and on the developers' side—time to breathe and grow virally. Now that we've seen a week of activity, it's time to give you the full story on Platform and what it means for you.

When we made changes to the site back in April, we broke up the menus to differentiate between the applications people use on Facebook and the core of the site.... Applications are things like Photos, Notes, Groups and Events. They live in the left hand menu and they use different parts of the core, which tend to live in the top menu—things like Facebook profiles and News Feed. But most importantly, applications use the real connections people have to help them share information more efficiently.

For example, the Facebook Photos application is actually the #1 most trafficked photo application on the entire web because it uses people's real connections—what we call the social graph—to help people efficiently share their photos. Facebook has this graph of increasingly powerful connections that people use to communicate.

We started working on Platform a little more than a year ago. Since then we've taken Platform out of beta, written FQL(Facebook Query Language), and various other tools for developers, and now we're ready for the next step. With this evolution of Facebook Platform, we've made it so that any developer can build the same applications that we can. And by that, we mean that they can integrate their application into Facebook—into the social graph—the same way that our applications like Photos and Notes are integrated.

You'll see applications integrating into Facebook in a lot of familiar ways. Applications can have a box on the profile. They may also have an item in the profile actions menu (below your profile picture). They can also have a link in the profile drop-down menu and put stories in Mini-Feed.

That's just profile integration though. Applications can also have a presence in the left hand menu, and that link can take you to whole pages that are generated within the Facebook site. These pages are in many ways the part of Platform that really enables developers to build full applications for Facebook. Applications can have anything they want on these home pages, and they can have as many pages like them as they want. It's not just a widget; it's a full application.

Since there will be a lot of applications, you will have the choice of adding and removing any applications you like. You can add new ones and even remove ours if you like. Wherever applications are displayed in some order, we try to let you reorder them. This means that you can reorder the boxes in your profile and the applications in your left hand menu in any way you want.

Maintaining the user experience is important, so we've made it so that you have to click to activate any flash object before it can start playing. This will prevent animations or videos or music from playing when a profile loads.

It's important to remember that simply seeing an application is not the same as interacting with it or granting it the ability to see your information. You will have to opt-in to any application in order for it to access your information or be put on your profile. Also, please note that we never sell your information or expose your contact information. You can manage your applications—ones you've added to your account, used on other sites or on your desktop—and use granular privacy controls for other applications in the "Applications" section of the Privacy page. If you see an application that you think is offensive or worrisome, you can report it, block it from ever interacting with your profile or information, or do both.

You can get a taste of how this all works by adding our Video application to your profile, or looking for an "add" link when you discover a new application on your friends' profile or within your News Feed.


Katie is Facebook's Director of Product.

This whole process started with a stack of post-its and a white board. We mapped out the different pages of the site, how you got there, and all the paths you could take from there. This exercise was incredibly useful in realizing the redundancies and complications of navigating Facebook.

When Facebook started, it was very simple. There weren't photos or notes, groups or events, mobile integration, or anything else. There was your profile, the network you joined, your friends, and messages. As we built more applications—photos, groups,... events—we kept loading them on to that side menu, and linking to them from under your profile picture. It had gotten really hard to discover what you were looking for, so we decided to re-organize in order to simplify and clean up the site.

First of all – we're damn lucky to have such passionate users. Within seconds of publishing the blog post about the Facebook Sneak Preview group, we had hundreds of people sign up and start commenting. As I write this now, nearly two weeks later, we're well over 112,000 members.

Our goal for the group was to put some of our ideas in front of you, see what you think, and get feedback on ways to improve. You gave us that, and way more than we could ever imagine. There are thousands of discussion threads with your suggestions on how to improve the... site. Some of them are fantastic, like adding search to discussion threads.

Other threads were, well, a little more creative. There are certain things that are core to your experience on Facebook. Networks are one. Being able to have all of your friends on Facebook is another. So, we won't be removing the network structure or kicking high school students off the site any time soon. That would be lame.

Many of you had really constructive feedback on the screenshots that we posted. We definitely heard you, and actually have made some modifications in response. There was an overwhelmingly positive response to the new Network pages. You noticed that we brought back some of the Pulse data, and you wanted more. Okay, done. When we roll out the Network pages, there will be an entire section dedicated to the network-specific statistics.

Some of you were worried about privacy. Even though our plan for Network pages takes into account all of the existing privacy rules, we thought we could be more obvious. We're going to add a "publicize" option to event and group creation pages, so that it's clear how to prevent these from showing up on Network pages.

Oh, and those collapsible boxes on your profile—we've been toying with different ways to improve the navigability of the profile page. Given your feedback, we decided to keep those around until we can come up with an even cooler way to manage your information. These are only a few examples of the great feedback you gave us based on the screenshots.

One last thing. I'm not sure why—but many of you are concerned that we might become less like Facebook and more like other sites on the web. I assure you all, we're not changing the goodness that is Facebook. We're continually innovating, and we're likely to use some of your ideas in the near future. So, stay tuned.


Katie, Facebook's Director of Product, had to fight a very strong urge to delete every thread that was all caps.

Most often, when we release something new to the site, you can read about it here on the blog and, at the same time, find the new feature or change on the site itself. However, pretty soon we're going to release some updates to our design, and instead of waiting till the day we launch, we wanted to give you a chance to see what we're doing ahead of time.

We've created a Facebook group called "Facebook Sneak Preview", where we've posted screenshots of the upcoming changes. We'd like to invite everyone to join.

The Facebook Sneak Preview group... is where we'll show you our plans before they're final. This gives you a chance to offer feedback, and us a chance to respond. We will update and add pictures as we make changes.

Here are the three biggest aspects of the upcoming change:

We've spent a lot of time on this blog going over what's already been accomplished—what we've changed, launched, re-launched, etc. So we wanted to spend some time talking about what's coming up in the next little while. Here are some of the ideas we'll be toying with and thinking about in the coming year.

1. Networks—The network structure is one of Facebook's defining features, and we won't be taking that away. However, we will be trying to hone in on what makes networks on Facebook similar to those in the "real-world," and how to make them... more relevant to each user's experience on the site.

2. Simplicity—There's a lot of stuff on Facebook. A lot of features. A lot of information. In the year to come, we'll be improving on the design of the site, making it easier to use and understand, while still providing all of the functionality and information we know and love.

3. Flexibility—Everyone wants something a little different out of Facebook. Some people post a new photo album daily. Some are importing their blog. Some need to keep in touch with a group of friends that are in ever widening geographic circles. Whatever it is you want to do with Facebook, we want to optimize your experience. We're going to be thinking more about the right ways to give you the controls you need over Facebook information, friends, and products.

So those are our big ideas for 2007. If you have any insight into them, please, let us know. Stay tuned for more feature enhancements and solutions in the coming year.


Katie Geminder, Director of Product, is so perfect she doesn't even need resolutions for improvement.

We frequently end blog entries with a sentence along the lines of, "if you have any suggestions, please send them here." It may seem as if you are sending your thoughts into a void, but our customer support team reads every suggestion that comes in and compiles lists of suggestions for everyone in the company. It helps us out a lot when you, the users, tell us what the small changes are that will improve the site. Whenever possible, we make these tweaks in order to make your time on Facebook even better. To offer a few examples, over the... past few months, you've been responsible for:

1. Group Sorting Options—There's always been a bunch of ways to sort your Friend List, but until recently the groups were only displayed in one way. Prompted by your feedback, we've introduced a menu of sorting options on the My Groups page—by recently updated, size, which ones you admin, sponsored, or secret groups.

2. Event Invites for unregistered emails—Events are a great way to plan and manage a guest list, but for a long time that guest list couldn't include people who didn't use Facebook. Now you can invite people to events using their email addresses. Even if they don't have a Facebook account, they can see the event and RSVP easily. And, while they don't have to register, they're certainly welcome to sign up for a Facebook account while they're at it.