Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) announced on Tuesday that it would modify the way third-party apps automatically share user stories to the news feed “without explicit action.” It seems that the largest social networking site is finally taking user privacy more seriously. The company said that users are often shocked to see the stories on their news feed without taking explicit action.
Facebook tries to strike balance
In order to earn confidence of disappointed users, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has vowed to control third-party auto share and to prioritize the content that user has readily chosen to share on the news feed. According to Peter Yang of product marketing team, the auto shared stories have come down remarkably in the last year, indicating that the problem has been solved itself to some extent.
However, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is keen to retain the third-party app developers and the brands they work for, and according to Yang there are various methods to make sure the third-party app is in the stream. Yang elaborated that there are few mobile approaches that can be used to ensure this.
Many tools for developers
According to Yang, users can install a mobile app through Send to Mobile when they log in with Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) to a website, say for example Rdio. When users log into Rdio through Facebook, Send to Mobile will show a notification in the user’s Facebook mobile app to download and install Rdio. When a user has upgraded to the new Facebook login, Send to Mobile works automatically without any extra effort.
Users will find a Like button on mobile apps, which can be integrated into third-party apps, through which they can share content from their apps just by clicking once. iOS users can access this feature currently, followed by a roll out on other platforms soon.
However, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) will continue to collect the auto-shared data about users which can be used for targeted advertising. The data will be shown on the Facebook profile.
Back in 2011, the social networking site launched its Open Graph Protocol, which allowed developers to let users post their activity to Facebook from other apps without having to deal with sharing prompts. The program has been extremely popular with developers.
