Tag: development

Facebook is Removing Application Tabs from Profiles

October 30, 2010 at 1:53 PM

So Facebook is removing application tabs from user profiles. This was announced months before but I only recently found out about it when I was presented with this message on an application tab:

Application tabs going away

So after application tabs are gone, how else are developers suppose to share information on a user’s profile with their app besides spamming the user’s wall or the news feeds of user’s friends? Well from what I see it, you can’t. There are currently no other alternatives to application tabs on displaying or sharing information. Not all information was meant to be shared in wall posts. When profile boxes and info sections were removed, the reasoning on this was claimed to “simplify navigation for users and reduce complexity for developers.” Application tabs are being removed on other hand “due to low usage rates”. Application tabs will be gone completely starting November 3. Adding application tabs to your profile is no longer possible and such applications that rely on application tabs like the one I have been using, called Last.fm Profile, no longer functions the way it used to.

Many developers and users have complained about the application tabs being removed, yet there is no response from Facebook and it appears they are just ignoring us. Go figure. Removing application tabs is a bad decision I believe Facebook is making in addition to them removing profile boxes and info sections in the past.

Posted in Social Networking | Tags: , , , ,

Plans on Two New URL Shortening Sites

August 15, 2009 at 11:11 PM

Recently I bought the domains, lolz.ws and lulz.ws. What am I going to do with them is make them URL Shortening sites.

Imagine linking to something funny on Twitter, Facebook, or to a friend using lolz.ws:

http://lolz.ws/alias

Imagine linking to something you are doing the lulz for using lulz.ws:

http://lulz.ws/alias

Of course it will be possible to use both URLs for just about anything. It will be a while before I get these sites up.

Posted in Projects | Tags: , , , ,

MySpace Sucks

May 16, 2009 at 12:12 AM

I’ve said it many times, MySpace sucks, and you’ve probably seen many articles or posts about this but I am as well going to put in my say.

From a developer’s point of view, their documentation sucks. I’ve written an app before on MySpace, before I decided to pull the plug on it. Today I decided to tinkering around with the old app and probably republish, but yet changed my mind. The documentation just totally sucks for OpenSocial 0.8, there are no examples, the current examples are for OpenSocial 0.7. What I did with the old app that was live was that I spent all over the forums looking for examples, but documentation for OpenSocial 0.7 wasn’t that horrible, but still bad. Facebook’s documentation is even better than MySpace’s. I also find out that development mode (or version) was completely broken cause MySpace wants to do all vanity URLs something like what Twitter does. So now if you make a change to a live app, and want to test it, you can’t.

Now for pretty much any end user’s point of view (yes, that’s you). Obviously from first glance, MySpace is pretty bloated with ads. There are ads everywhere. That’s no problem for me though, since I use AdBlock Plus to hide them all. Of course Myspace is also infested with spam, pointless drama, immaturity, etc.

Anyways, the privacy sucks. What I noticed with Profile 2.0, is that you can hide your age and location. Cool, however it’s still shown on MySpace mobile and in search, totally ruining the point of doing that. Just recently there was a new feature called Status Comments, now people can comment each others status updates. Awesome, however that’s like a rip from Facebook, and it has spam issues, and they can’t be disabled.

Today, they launched MySpaceIM Web for every region, and amazing it’s like a complete copy from Facebook. It’s like MySpace resorting to what Friendster did in the past after they beat them out.

Also, MySpace sometimes has glitches when deleting an account, such as information not completely going away, such as comments, default picture, and display name. Usually it’s suppose to delete all of this. In rare cares, deleting an account may be impossible even after confirming the email, cause it never processes. I wouldn’t recommend it but you might be stuck violating their Terms to get your account deleting, since their Customer Service sucks that bad, sometimes they never respond, and other times you just get excuses (or responses saying the exact thing you already did).

I also noticed they came with a new URL shorting service called lnk.ms, although they can only be generated through status updates. Clearly they are copying Twitter as well, but trying to be their own by creating their own URL shorting service, and also with the lame 140 character limit they decided to copied too.

Of course then you got the Local Reviews crap that no one cares about, like why does this belong on a social networking site. If I wanted to read reviews, I’d use Google or go to a reviews site, not MySpace. Same for going to look for a job, posting an ad or hell even to watch videos.

MySpace is already losing lots of traffic, that’s why they are resorting from copying Twitter and Facebook. Facebook already exceeds MySpace on Alexa, as shown in this picture:

facebookvmyspacestats

All MySpace is trying to do is surviving, but really failing at it.

Posted in Social Networking | Tags: , , , ,