The selfish application
Some time ago, several of my friends in Facebook installed the ‘MyQuestions’ application: this application allows the user to pose a question and invite answers from their friends. Significantly, in order to answer a question the friend must, in turn, install the application. I was that friend. Since installing the application I haven’t intentionally used it to pose any new questions myself. However, it seems I have posed a question - on installation the application is set to ask a question, any question, in order to be seen by my friends. Anyone looking at my profile will see this question and be invited to answer (after installing the application themselves of course).
So my friends will have seen that I had asked a question I never actually would have asked - in fact the teeth-curlingly banal “What is the most romantic place you’ve ever visited?”. I only discovered this when a newly ‘befriended’ friend obliged me by answering it.
This kind of marketing and propagation of Facebook applications has been described as ‘viral’. Actually, I would borrow a different idea from biology - the Selfish Gene[1]. I suggest that in Facebook we are seeing something slightly new - the wholesale deployment of applications whose over-riding purpose is to be copied and installed elsewhere. Marketing has always been an aspect of commercial software development, but perhaps these applications show a different balance of priorities.
Let’s examine what happened here: An application I installed displayed a message to anyone who viewed my Facebook ‘profile’. Both the application and the underlying Facebook platform colluded to present this message as having come from me. The motivations behind this behaviour are interesting:
- the application is behaving in an entirely selfish way - it just wants to get replicated by encouraging my friends to install it
- Facebook itself benefits from the more applications = more users = more page impressions = more advertising revenue calculation.
What I find disconcerting about Facebook is how we, the users, seem prepared to give up so much control so easily. I notice that some users are starting to use Facebook to serve their personal ‘homepage’ on the web. In the course of this it seems to me that they are compromising in the following ways:
- they have no easy way of knowing how it actually looks to the rest of the world
- applications they install into this area may well be carrying on with their own agenda
- they accept that only Facebook users can access it
- they trust the application developer not to do something naughty on their behalf - asking a very provocative question for example could get more people fired up to respond for which they would need to install the application. Note that I am not suggesting that the developer of this particular application would do, or has done, this - just that the potential is there.
For the curious, the only response to my inadvertently asked question was, “Aaah now that would be telling ;-)”.
The MyQuestions application is developed by Slide. Facebook being what it is, there is no useful way of linking to the deployed application, without requiring the viewer to have a Facebook account.
[1] With apologies to Richard Dawkins.
Update: Mike Ellis, in a comment below, has pointed to this story on TechCrunch, which explains some steps that Facebook are taking to restrict these sorts of nefarious activities in the part of applications running on their platform.
Technorati Tags: Facebook, MyQuestions, selfish application, selfish gene, viral
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:54 am
IIRC, My Questions used to come installed on Fb by default, and it was probably the first Fb app I uninstalled for pretty much the reasons you described (though I didn’t articulate them as clearly at the time!).
I seem to recall that at that point the “default” question was “What are you doing this weekend?” which was quite intrusive enough, and the fact that it had appeared without any intent or “permission” from me was a show-stopper as far as I was concerned.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
“Facebook itself benefits from the more applications = more users = more page impressions = more advertising revenue calculation”
This is true of the applications on facebook.
The interesting thing is that this whole marketing technique is what major brands use to launch new products. Find the cool kids, give them free stuff and the other kids will follow.
This is exactly why social networking tools take off in the way they do. They bring in the “cool kids” who invite their followers, who invite their followers etc.
The difference between marketing your N**e trainers in this way and marketing your social network tool in this way is that the trainers wear out. You can sell to the same people multiple times. As long as you can reach enough of the cool kids you will be able to stay at the top of your game without saturating your market.
Social networking is not like that. Facebook has gone some way to solving the problem by becoming a platform for fun little apps that mean the cool kids can make their followers pirates or zombies (or ask them questions).
Is it sustainable? I don’t think so, but only time will tell.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Pete: I didn’y know that the question had changed from “What are you doing this weekend?”, to “do you know a good romantic spot?”. I guess it’s just working its way up to asking one of us out….
Ross: Is it sustainable? It could be one of those strange things, where the novelty wanes for the individual pretty quickly, but more punters just keep on rolling up…. I know I’ve grown more reluctant to install applications on Facebook as time has gone by.
October 24th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
I think the important thing about all of this is user-behaviour and the way we provide information about ourselves and present ourselves online without thinking. This is going to be a really important step change if we are to move towards user-centric identity management. When we add an application, we get the standard splash screen (just like the certificate pop-ups we all just click through):
———————————————–
Allow this application to…
Know who I am and access my information
Granting access to information is required to add applications. If you are not willing to grant access to your information, do not add this application.
————————————————-
Then we are invited to all the application to:
————————————————-
Put a box in my profile
Place a link in my left-hand navigation
Publish stories in my News Feed and Mini-Feed
Place a link below the profile picture on any profile
————————————————-
And Finally:
————————————————-
My Questions was not created by Facebook. By clicking ‘add,’ you agree to the Platform Application Terms of Use.
————————————————
All of these have significant implications, but we are just focused on installing the application and click through…giving the application permission to do what they want
I just tried uninstalling and reinstalling My Questions…and it doesn’t seem to be automatically setting a question now. All about service providers AND users learning??
October 24th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Nicole,
good point about the splash screen. The process of installing the application is familiar, therefore we just click through impatiently, ignoring the EULA. But the context, and the consequences of these ‘choices’ and ‘agreements’ are different, and maybe even dangerous to the individual….
October 25th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I also uninstalled My Questions after it asked what I considered to be a stupid question on my behalf, and have had odd messages from friends on occasion, which turn out to come from one of the Facebook applications and not the friend. I really don’t like this, and think application designers should not do this kind of thing. The problems’s only going to get worse when these applications develop some sort of advanced artificial intelligence, and delibrately start major rows between former friends!
October 25th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Indeed!
Now, how do I know that this is the real Vashti speaking, and not some FB application masquerading as her….
Hmmm - that’s an idea, we could call it ‘MyOpinion’!
October 26th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Hey Paul. You’re not the first to pick up on this. According to TechCrunch, Facebook are starting to respond to this kind of dodgyness.
Mike
October 26th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Thanks Mike. I think I should post a little update linking to this in the interest of fairness.