Saturday, July 26, 2008

Facebook.com Inc. cracks down on abusive applications

Facebook.com Inc. promises to intensify its efforts to wee out programs that violate its rules for protecting users’ privacy. More than 30,000 applications have been designed to run on Facebook since the company opened its site to outside developers 14 months ago. Millions of Facebook users have taken the most successful applications with open arms, helping the applications turn into hot commodities. Facebook.com Inc, estimates that the makers of its top applications have raised over $200 million form venturing capitalists.
As the number of applications has over flown Facebook, its users have increased form 24 million in May 2007 to around 90 million today. This rapid growth has narrowed Myspace.com’s lead in the internet’s social network niche and helped privately held Facebook secure since a $240 million investment form Microsoft Corp.
Having so many outside applications on the side has caused some stress for Facebook, too. Some applications have included security holes that gave web surfers unauthorized peeks at the personal profiles of Facebook users. “Facebook has already removed about 1,000 abusive applications since it opened its Web site and plans to move even more aggressive as it establishes clearer ground rules for operating on its site” said Benjamin Ling, Facebook’s director of platform program management.

2 comments:

katiedickson said...

Privacy is in my opinion (and many others) one of the best features of Facebook and often these applications become quite the burden on users. In my opinion, this is excellent action they are taking to ween out the problems and maintain the uniqueness to their "network".

christa schott said...

As an obsessed facebook user it is nice to know that they are making this a mjor concern. Privacy is important when dealing with any socail network on the internet, and the lack of it could diminish its current profits.