When you get a notification from a facebook app, they usually are deceitful. Sorry to those developers that aren’t jerks, but it seems that many of you are.
Here’s a screen cap from my gmail account:
Sorry I had to thumbnail it, please do click on it to actually see it, otherwise it would break my column, which I hate!
What it seems to be saying is that I have a funwall and my friend posted on it.
BUT I DON’T HAVE A FUN WALL, and I don’t want a fun wall, and I don’t think I need one either.
This is actually a request for me to add the application.
Even if my friend did use her fun wall to send something to me, it should allow me to see that without adding the application. It’s really stupid, and it makes me mad, and not only that it makes me want to use facebook less.
Anyone else feel this way?
Oh, I absolutely agree and I fell for that several times before I realized what it was! It is indeed a very tricky way to get those apps to become viral. My most recent annoyance with FB apps is the ones that automatically send such messages to all of your friends unless you uncheck the box (which no one seems to do) and the ones that send these messages everyday without the consent of the user. FB apps have added a lot of value to the network, but I’m beginning to question if they are actually worth all of the annoyances! (the “block app” feature *never* works for me)
Yeah, blocking apps doesn’t seem to work at all, I wonder if that is because that is being defeated by developers purposefully, or it’s just sloppily implemented by FB.
Depending on how you look at this, the problem you’re bringing up is fairly rare. Very few companies are really partaking in that kind of deception. However, Slide, the makers of Fun Wall, is probably the largest Facebook app maker (with the most users) and they are notorious for their shady behaviors. They also made My Questions, and it was specifically cited as a problem application. Slide and Rock You were instrumental in forcing Facebook to disable what could have been a very cool feature – conditional Facebook applications.
Don’t worry, Facebook notices these things and does tend to remedy the problem. Unfortunately, they tend to disable the feature that enables deception, rather than punishing the people who abuse them.
Is it really rare? It seems like I get requests like this all the time. I get things that seem to say that oh my friend has __________ to/for me and just click here to see what, but instead it’s an install request and there is actually no way to see what they did without installing. STUPID! and full of lies.