With an upgrade to Open Graph, Facebook have limited the ability of apps to automatically post updates to users’ walls.
In a post on the developers blog, Facebook has made an effort to make the service better by encouraging developers to put the user experience first.
Several new Open Graph publishing guidelines issued earlier this week will require that Facebook apps that automatically publish status updates in users’ feeds when they watch a video or read an article will now have to allow for a delay before doing so.
Facebook says that users must have engaged with the article or video for 10 or more seconds before a status message can be sent. If, in the case of video, the length is shorter than 10 seconds, the entire content must be viewed before a post can be sent to the user’s wall.
Facebook stresses that users must be allowed to turn sharing on off for an app’s content and that these selected settings should persist.
The new guidelines also advise developers to only encourage users to tag friends when they have actually performed an action together or to tag a location if they are currently there.
These new rules guiding best practice will benefit the overall Facebook experience by eliminating some users’ niggling complaints.
Image of Facebook via Shutterstock
