If you had been listening to Facebook app developers over the last couple of months, you would have heard a lot of doomsday scenarios for their apps and/or the site itself once the redesign launched. But we're now two weeks past the redesign's unveiling -- and far as we can tell, there still hasn't been an apocalypse. Just to make sure we weren't missing anything, we polled some of the site's most prominent developers:
- RockYou founder Jia Shen tells us that while he's not sure what long-term effects the changes may have on his company and its apps, he likes the way the redesign looks. And he hasn’t heard any negative feedback from his users yet.
- Social Gaming Network’s CEO Shervin Pishevar told us that he’s “very happy with the redesign” -- especially the new Wall feed.
- Blake Commagere, the creator of the Vampires , Zombies, and Werewolves apps, said that his users love the new design. So far, he hasn't seen any impact on his apps' performance.
We did find one developer who wasn't fully sold on the new design. And given that Slide is the site's biggest app-maker, it's worth noting that VP Keith Rabois has had issues with the redesign for quite a while, and those concerns haven't gone away, he tells us. Keith says he has yet to see any fallout so far -- but then again, only a fraction of Facebook's users have migrated over to the new design:
Our metrics look really good. I wouldn’t say that I have confidence to say that that’s how it will look two weeks from now. We’re just sitting back and watching.
Keith makes a valid point -- it's too early to tell how the redesign will affect applications' ability to grow, which is what most developers were worried about when the new design was first previewed earlier this year. We'll make another point -- the redesign was always going to be most pain for new apps that haven't been established already.
But the bottom line is that none of these developers have had to drastically change their business plan to adapt to the new profile. And none of them are saying that they expect to see a drop-off in user engagement as more people adopt the new look.
See Also:
Found! A Developer Who Likes The Facebook Redesign
Meet The Man Behind Facebook's Most Useless - And Popular - Apps
