The Facebook Revolving Door

The Facebook Revolving Door, originally uploaded by bigmick.

 

"Cool, Ravi has invited me to play poker. That should be fun."

"Add the app, ok, why not.. (I can always remove it later if it sucks).."

"Lift my skirt and show you my data, ok, no big deal."

"Invite ten friends. Yep, typical, but no thanks. Where is the skip button, I just want to play with Ravi?"

"Hmmm, this sucks. Unselect all my friends and click go."

YOU MUST INVITE PEOPLE

"Get lost. I'm out of here. What happened to Ravi?"

"Uninstall application. Bye byeee!"

----------------------------------------

This is a typical revolving door of Facebook and all those running with gold pans and picks to the gold mine of Facebook should be aware that whilst it is an amazing source of getting new users, it is much much much harder to retain them than you think.

It's the old dilemma that easy switching to you normally means easy switching from you.

Here endeth the lesson (rant).

Moral of story - don't join Facebook?

Please say yes so that I know I'm going to heaven...

Moral of story is Facebook needs to allow try before you buy on apps

You need to pay for the apps?

"You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run....."

Every application I tried on Facebook was very reminiscent of the available apps during the early days of PCs (pre Apple and IBM) .... that is, with the obvious exception of network connection, they were not advancements at all but rather in the category of simple toys could not be used, realistically, for any serious matter.  I figured to give it a few months and look back to see if they have evolved, or serious programmers have put effort into developing applications.

None of the ones I looked at showed enough promise to even follow their development process let alone try to offer hints or guidance or even a wish list to the developers.... there was just no substance to grab hold of...

One would guess that there must be at least some applications (that I didn't look for) that might not exhibit the traits I saw  --  but if so why haven't they risen in visibility to the masses?

No one who is developing serious tools has yet engaged the Facebook API, so far as I can tell. I've known some serious appication developers who've talked a lot about it, but none have put forth the time/money/code yet. Question asking is about the only useful application I've com across, and the ma.gnolia plugin, just as a convenient way to see bookmarks for that community. But those two examples aren't much