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: BizMediaLaw Blog from Wahab, Riveles & Medenica LLC

Facebook Apps Now Less Coy with Application Verification Program

Facebook is a serious marketplace for brands looking to capitalize on the productivity lost by your employer, while you post your Monday bender pics at work. But let's face it, you're not going to fall for the ol' tell me about your product and its benefits routine. You want a new fangled, post-modern ad that nary bares a trademark, but cleverly enables you further mug the nation's GDP by wasting time in your cubicle.

Enter the Facebook "app." These Facebook platform widgets are small footprint mini programs that don't do anything but enrich the Facebook experience. Games, contact list organizers, da da experience generators, your options are limitless when dodging real world responsibility. And the only thing standing between you and more apps is the heretofore sketchy Facebook submission guidelines facing brands and developers.

Up until now, Facebook app developers had to interpret the current guidelines to determine if their app would be allowed into the Facebook environment. For example some of our developer clients were developing apps that were branded by major alcohol distributors. Did these apps run afoul of Facebook's prohibition on the sale of certain types of goods? Well, that is potentially debatable.

Facebook has set forth a new vetting process, the Application Verification Program. Hopefully with this new vetting process will provide clarity and predictability.

Facebook Platform's Application Verification Program is an optional new program designed to provide applications with a way to stand out and reassure users that they will provide a good experience. Verified applications will appear to users early next year, beginning in an application's About Page and the Application Directory.

We will help educate users to recognize the verification badge as a symbol for applications which are respectful, transparent and meet the guiding principles for trustworthiness. In addition, during the 12-month term of verification, users will see more information from verified applications as we increase their allocations for communication channels such as requests and notifications, and increase visibility of their stories in News Feed.

Though there is a not unnoticeable fee ($375 for the average business) involved it might provide the type of clarity that a developer and its client can use before investing resources into an app that wont ever get to see primetime.

We'll try to keep you posted.

Full post as published by BizMediaLaw Blog from Wahab, Riveles & Medenica LLC on November 27, 2008 (boomark / email).