Since Facebook’s launched its redesign, a lot of app developers have seen traffic to their apps fall off pretty substantially. But Scott Rafer, the founder of Lookery, an ad network for Facebook apps, said that the traffic to his publisher’s apps has almost halved since the design was launched. Rafer takes this to mean that Facebook's app platform is dead.
So what’s his solution? Developers should avoid the platform and build normal Web applications outside of Facebook that use Facebook Connect instead.
What's that? Facebook Connect is a way for apps on the rest of the Web to implement login and social features from Facebook on their sites. For example, you can use your Facebook login to sign in to Digg, and then every time you Digg a story, it gets published to your Facebook feed. Digg gets the viral benefits of Facebook -- getting your activity on Digg published into Facebook's feed -- but keeps the eyeballs on its own site, and doesn't force you to find and install a Facebook app.
In essence: Rafer is saying that developers are now better off not solely betting on Facebook, and instead using Facebook as one tool to drive traffic.
Check out his full presentation:
Scott Rafer Presentation - Free Legal Forms
See Also:
Facebook Redesign Isn't A Disaster For Every Developer: Some Are Seeing Traffic Boom
Facebook Redesign Succeeds: Widgets Are Dead
Is The Redesign Killing Facebook Apps?
