Facebook Bans AdSense In Apps 130
An anonymous reader writes "Three days ago Facebook finalized their list of accepted ad networks for use within Facebook Apps; AdSense being an (unsurprising?) omission from the list, stating that any missing ad network had yet to agree to the Facebook TOS. Facebook developers were quick to point out the only losers in this cold-war between Facebook and Google are the developers themselves. Other devs go on to clarify that the reputations of some of the accepted networks is shady at best, leaving developers with sub-par options to monetize their work on the Facebook platform."
Facebook's demands (Score:5, Informative)
The TOS "advertising providers" have to comply with are very very strict. I doubt Google will agree to things like these:
And Facebook would be able to "audit" Google for anything covered in the agreement:
And if anything goes wrong, Facebook already had decided the verdict of the trial:
Facebook is pretty much an abusive platform (Score:5, Informative)
A couple of months back I spent a few weeks looking at developing a Facebook App. By the time I was done coding a simple one, I'd basically come to the conclusion that there were a lot better things to do with my time. Here's why:
* The APIs and SDKs. There's a lot of them. And not in the lots-to-love sense. In the dissociative identity disorder sense. Some of them work as specified. Some of them don't.
* The documentation. It sucks. It sucks extra because of the changes to the APIs -- a lot of times, you don't know if any given howto, forum post, internet article, and (in some cases) actual official documentation refers to the version of the API or SDK you're using. It sucks *particularly* hard because some complete moron at Facebook made the decision to blow away a community-built wiki site and replace it with a Bing search of the half-hearted official docs. And a lot of the links still out there still point to it.
* The policy/UI changes. Profile boxes (rather successful interaction hooks) were phased out in favor of tabs, which were going to be The New And Better Way. Now tabs are going away -- why? Oh, because it turned out that people didn't actually use them and Facebook now has another idea of what to do.
And this is from a company that's certainly sitting on the actual resources to do a hell of a lot better than this.
Watching all this, I developed two theories about Facebook:
1) It's possible that its success is more or less an accident of history -- they put something good enough together at the right time to become the premiere social network, and because of the network effect, it's sticky enough people don't simply defect despite its problems. But as an organization, they're not genuinely smart enough to do much further effectively... including providing a good platform for third-party devs.
2) Facebook doesn't really actually care about providing an effective and reliable platform for developers. They don't have to. There's enough incentive for would-be devs to try something and see if it works out that they can let the mass of attempts hit the wall and fail, and still reap benefits from those who break through and make things work. In the meanwhile, they can pretty much shift agendas as they see fit, and if that breaks a number of developer eggs, oh well. More will come.
I'm not sure which one is more true. My money is on #2, really, but there's possibly some measure of #1 as well. Either way, though, the upshot is that it's more or less an abusive platform, and the announcement that they're forbidding AdSense doesn't surprise me in the least -- it's totally consistent with both theories.
If you've got an idea that needs to feed from the fabric of the social web in order to succeed, then it's still the place to go. But if you've got another idea that doesn't, it might be better to go with that than to work with these guys.
Re:Slashdot bias (Score:2, Informative)
I love how you mischaracterize the story just so you can go on a rant against "slashdot." They didn't block ads. There are ads all over the fucking place.
And it's "they're," you knucklehead.
Yeah, he's a knucklehead who can't correctly do easy things.
People can bitch and moan about "grammar nazis" all they like. What hard experience will tell you, assuming you fucking listen, is that people who can correctly write a sentence in their own native language are one hell of a lot more likely to have an argument worth entertaining than those who fail basic things that 4th graders are expected to know.
If you have a weakness in this area and basic grammar is difficult for you, the remedy is easy to understand. Man up, grow a pair of balls, get some guts, and admit that you have a weakness. Then confront your weakness and work to improve it and turn it into a strength. Don't do it because some grammar nazi might hassle you. Do it because you give a shit about yourself and want to improve.
If you can't handle that, you can always bitch about those terrible grammar nazis. That sure is easier than admitting you don't have what it takes to work on your weaknesses, isn't it?
Re:Facebook is pretty much an abusive platform (Score:2, Informative)
1) It's possible that its success is more or less an accident of history -- they put something good enough together at the right time to become the premiere social network, and because of the network effect, it's sticky enough people don't simply defect despite its problems.
You think that's an "accident"?? Almost certainly, that was the business plan! People were starting to turn on to the idea of social networks, and by targeting exclusively universities first, they would hit an early-adopter demographic just at the time they were forming many new social connections (freshers) that they wouldn't want to lose by moving to a different network later, and the network effect would make it grow. That ain't no accident!
Either way, though, the upshot is that it's more or less an abusive platform
Newsflash -- they're all abusive platforms. That's what tech giants do. We all know about trying to break away from the MS monopoly, and the tight hold they've tried to have on the world's doc formats. Good luck trying to stop Google having your data -- even if you eschew their services they'll still track you thanks to Google Analytics on most major sites. (And they really do see it as their data -- if you agree to send your search queries and your URL clicks to Bing, Google will make a merry dance about how that means Bing is copying their data. In other words Google does not believe that you have the right to send your behaviour data to anyone but them.) Facebook wants to own your social interactions, and make as much as possible of your online world depend on your social network ("look, your applications are now part of our network"). And, as has been true since long before Microsoft beat up Netscape, every large technology company wants to break every other large technology company for fear that even if they're not really competitors now they might be soon. Facebook might do search, so Google better kill 'em now if they can...
And it's not conspiracy -- it's explicit. The VCs that fund them in the start always ask the question "How are you going to protect your market?" -- or in other words "How can we achieve lock-in?"