Facebook Developers

Applications on Facebook Platform are businesses, and we want those businesses to succeed. That's why there is a variety of ways to monetize your applications, including using third-party providers offering services to help you along the way.

In an effort to keep you informed on the best ways to adhere to our policies and principles, while continuing to grow your business on Facebook Platform, we've created a list of monetization providers that are no longer permitted to operate on Facebook Platform or Facebook.com. These providers have violated our policies and/or principles. We'll keep this list current, so if you have any questions as to whether your provider has been prohibited from operating on Facebook Platform, you can refer back to the list at any time. If we find an application utilizing a banned provider on Facebook Platform, that application risks enforcement action.

We have also updated the list of other known third party providers that are available to help you monetize your application.These providers are not affiliated with Facebook and, therefore, it is your responsibility as the developer to ensure compliance with all Facebook policies and advertising guidelines when using their services on our platform. We are committed to providing the best possible user experience and hope you will join us in doing the same throughout all areas of your application.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please direct any questions you may have to the Developer Forum. If you are a monetization provider and wish to contact us please direct inquiries to our Web form.

Nick is a member of the Platform team.

The Facebook team will say bonjour to Paris at the annual technology conference, Le Web on December 9th and 10th, where we’ll discuss the latest in the real time Web.

If you plan on attending, we hope you can join us for a discussion with Ethan Beard, Director of the Facebook Developer Network, who is delivering a keynote on Wednesday. We’re also co-hosting Facebook Developer Garage Paris – Le Web edition with Netvibes, which is open and free to all developers. Please see our Facebook event for more information.

You can find the latest updates from conference organizers on the Le Web Facebook page. We'll also post our own updates during the conference to the Facebook Platform Page.

We hope to see you in Paris or connecting with us online!

Julia, who manages developer events worldwide, is looking forward to crepes under the Eiffel Tower.

When we announced the Developer Roadmap, we also simplified our policies by replacing the Facebook Platform Guidelines with the new Developer Principles and Policies, and posted Examples and Explanations for guidance on putting policy into practice. Our goal is to make it easy to understand our policies, so you can invest your time developing great applications instead of puzzling over rules.

We've all seen applications build long-term businesses by staying focused on providing a good user experience, creating user trust and engagement. These apps help all developers succeed by attracting more users to engage with great applications, creating a virtuous cycle that benefits the whole ecosystem. To continue to support this focus on user experience, we're investing in personnel and technology to help us better uncover and rapidly respond to policy violations. You'll continue to be able to launch an application without prior approval -- that's an important part of our open Platform philosophy -- but you should expect it to be proactively reviewed at any time.

Our Approach to Enforcement

Our aim is for the Developer Policies and Examples and Explanations to reflect the specifics you need to easily make decisions and manage your applications. While our policies will guide our approach, no document can itemize every way to generate a bad user experience, so we'll be enforcing our broader principles as well. Those who try to circumvent the spirit of the policies or principles, or exploit a "loophole," will be subject to enforcement.

When we find a violation, the action we take will depend on the developer's compliance history, and the nature and severity of the violation. In many cases we temporarily suspend some or all application functionality, or permanently disable.

Timing for the New Policies

Most of the revised policies are simplified versions of what we already required, and are therefore fully in effect. But as we said last month, we've also incorporated additional requirements, some of which were previously expected only of applications within the Verification program (which is being retired since all apps must now meet those standards).

We realize that for most of you adapting takes time, so we won't be universally enforcing the increased requirements on all developers until noon PST 16 December 2009. But we expect the largest developers to set a positive example by proactively complying ahead of time, and anyone may hear from us in advance of the deadline asking for particular fixes. You should carefully read the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and the Developer Principles and Policies to ensure you understand what's required. To help, we've provided highlights of changes and clarifications in the Latest Policy News section of the Examples and Explanations.

As we progress through the Developer Roadmap and the product evolves, we'll continue simplifying the policies and posting examples and explanations. Typically we'll announce substantial policy changes in the Developer Blog, with a lead time before they go into effect. However, in cases where we see exploits that require quick action to protect the ecosystem, where applicable we will post an update to our Examples and Explanations document and post an alert on the Platform Live Status (subscribe by email here) announcing our intention to enforce right away.

Feedback

We hope you'll share your questions and feedback with us and the community in the Developer Forum. And if you see violations please let us know using the "Report" link at the bottom of canvas pages and application profile pages.

We appreciate the great apps you build, and look forward to working with you in protecting the Facebook Platform ecosystem and keeping it a welcoming place for users.

Paul and the rest of the Platform Policy Team stay healthy by riding the virtuous cycle.