Loosing Site

Facebook is changing the way that applications’ “About” pages are structured to fit in with the way that their other “Pages” work. The About page gives prospective users some background information before they sign up for the application, and can also be used to provide instruction and give feedback. Each about page contains a review section and that is going to remain.

Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News via kwout

What’s changing is that now developers will be able to add other content; movies, videos, flash animations, rss feeds etc. Possibilities for marketing and support include:

• screencasts of the application in action
• rss feeds from the developers
• photo or video posts from users

It would even, I think, be possible to place a live instance of the profile view of an application in its own About page.

User’s involvement with the applications can also change as they can now be fans of an application as well as, or instead of being users. I opens up the possibility of an application having an enormous fan base, but no users, if it delivers a service that doesn’t require user information or user preferences. Perhaps a calculator, a conversion utility or the front end of a library OPAC.

It’ll be interesting to watch how this change will affect peoples relationships with and take-up of the applications.