Facebook’s new strategy?

 Make it less annoying for its user

How you May ask? Well according to their recent developer press release… here’s how!

You Can Read in Peace

So you’re browsing your newsfeed one day and a small article pops up titled “How Viagra Changed My Life.” You have nothing to do for the next ten minutes so you click it out of boredom and read a harrowing tale of one man’s near-death allergic reaction to the little blue pill. Unimpressed you shut down the window and walk into your kitchen to make a sandwich. Suddenly you hear your phone beeping endlessly. Either you suddenly became really popular or you messed up.

Then it hits you, all of your friends will have just been told that their friend X has just read “How Viagra Changed My Life” and are connecting the non-existent dots. In reality, this auto-sharing of content is not only annoying but also a waste of app developers’ time. Thankfully Facebook has cottoned on to the fact that we, the public, are not amused and have expressed their will to get rid of this feature permanently.

“In order to provide users with experiences that meet their expectations, we will no longer approve custom actions that publish stories as people consume content. These apps must use the appropriate built-in actions or create a different sharing experience. We are also deprecating a handful of features that led to low-quality user experiences.”

They will also be removing the roadblock app that appears when you click on an article asking you to install the publisher as an app. Facebook agrees that they “create an inconsistent experience for people by asking them to give permissions in order to access content with little context.”

 More Photos!

Facebook has determined that “image-led stories have shown 70% more clicks.” They are implementing a strategy that would make your timeline look less text-ridden and more like Tumblr.

This :

Will now look like this:

Less Spam More Bam!

Facebook has discovered that apps that automatically spam posts on your friend’s walls without your knowledge aren’t popular.

“Custom actions that automatically publish back to Facebook as a person consumes content in your app will no longer be approved. We will only allow apps that use our built-in actions to automatically publish stories as content is consumed.”

Hopefully, these small changes will make the experience less intrusive and give more power back into the hands of us little folk. Time will tell but for now, read as many embarrassing articles as you want!