Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that those Candy Crush or Farmville notifications may soon be a thing of the past.
As the social network continues to grow Facebook has demonstrated a willingness to listen to the concerns of its users. First it was sentiment buttons, released after millions of users clamored for a dislike button, and now it seems as though Facebook is set to address another pressing concern.
No more invitations, but when will the change be made?
For millions of people the constant stream of invitations to play Facebook games such as Candy Crush turned into a genuine annoyance. Now Zuckerberg has used his speech at a Townhall Q&A at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi, India, to announce that the social network is working on a solution.
The Facebook founder claimed to have noticed that a question about ending the invitations was the most upvoted comment on an online thread and decided that action had to be taken.
“I sent a message to the person who runs the team in charge of our developer platform, and I said that by the time I do this Townhall Q&A, it would be good if we had a solution to this problem,” said Zuckerberg. “She emailed me later that night, and said there are some tools — that are kind of outdated — that allow people to send invitations to people who’ve never used a game, and don’t play games on Facebook. We hadn’t prioritized shutting that down, we just had other priorities. But if this is the top thing that people care about, we’ll prioritize that and do it. So we’re doing it!”
Facebook continues to innovate
So it’s good news for people that don’t want to be bombarded with notifications from games that they do not play, but Zuckerberg did not reveal when the change would be implemented or in what form. It seems unlikely that the Candy Crush invitation system will be completely closed down, but at least it will be more difficult for more people to send mass invites.
During his speech Zuckerberg also revealed that the “Free Basic” Internet.org program has so far brought 15 million people from around the globe online for the first time. He later went on to explain why India is such an important part of Facebook’s strategy.
It all boils down to opportunity for the company, with Facebook standing to gain if it can bring hundreds of millions of unconnected Indians online.
