Edited with response from Meteor.

So Meteor Ireland launched a competition earlier via a Facebook App to find Ireland’s Social Networking King or Queen. Out of curiosity and hearing a little bit of a kerfuffle about it I decided to have a look. Here’s what I was presented with when I interacted with it:

My initial thought was ‘good job I actually bothered to read the ins and outs of this before hitting go’. I’ve never encountered a Facebook app that would what I would term spam your wall as well as your photos, videos & notes and friend’s news feeds.

Needless to say I clicked ‘Leave application’. Apparently Meteor are taking in and considering feedback on this ‘feature’ of the app. Hopefully they will revise it as I can’t imagine you will get too many people clicking ‘allow’ here or if they do being please about the app’s access to so much of an individual’s profile.

It’s got me wondering about the whole Facebook app development process. Do designers and developers follow the same steps they would if they were developing an iPhone or standalone web app? Is there any user testing? What about prototyping or wireframing? What works/doesn’t work?

Response:

..the access screen on our facebook app is a standard access screen as per Facebook’s rules and regulations. Unfortunately the messaging on this cannot be changed, however we can assure you that we don’t access any user’s personal information other than their name, gender and profile pic, which is completely standard for the majority of facebook applications.

Facebook simply wouldn’t provide the functionality to post a fun comment if it wasn’t allowed, look at Social Interview for example which has 4 million monthly active users! If people don’t want to partake in the app they can do one of many things: they can block an application from their own profile on Facebook, delete the posts the same as you would a comment from a friend, or opt out of this application if they so wish. Our search for Ireland’s social networking king and queen really is only meant to be a bit of fun for people and not mean to be taken too seriously. As mentioned above, people can request to opt out if they are nominated and don’t wish to be involved or can just block the app itself.