Facebook Aims To Give Users More Control Over Sharing From Apps

Facebook announced some new options for users using apps at f8 last month, letting them decline to share certain data when giving the app permissions. Today, Facebook provided an update on how it̵...
Facebook Aims To Give Users More Control Over Sharing From Apps
Written by Chris Crum

Facebook announced some new options for users using apps at f8 last month, letting them decline to share certain data when giving the app permissions.

Today, Facebook provided an update on how it’s “giving people more control over when they share from apps.”

Facebook had this to say in a blog post:

We’ve found that stories people choose to explicitly share from third party apps are typically more interesting and get more engagement in News Feed than stories shared from third party apps without explicit action. We’ve also heard that people often feel surprised or confused by stories that are shared without taking an explicit action. In the coming months, we will continue to prioritize explicitly shared stories from apps in News Feed over implicitly shared stories.

This means people will see fewer implicit stories from third party apps in the future. However, people will continue to see interesting and relevant content from third party apps that their friends have explicitly chosen to share.

The company is now encouraging app makers who are publishing stories implicitly to consider some other options like sharing Open Graph stories explicitly, sharing with the message dialog, utilizing Send to Mobile, or using the new Like Button for mobile apps.

Peter Yang writes on the Facebook Developers blog, “You can request to mark your stories as explicit during the Open Graph submission process. Explicit Open Graph stories usually include a clear Facebook sharing control in your app…The new Message Dialog lets people share your app’s content in a more personal way by displaying it in a conversation thread on Messenger.”

“Send to Mobile gives people a shortcut to install your mobile app when they log in with Facebook to your website,” says Yang. “For example, when people log in with Facebook to Rdio on the web, Send to Mobile will display a notification in a person’s Facebook mobile app to download and install Rdio. Best of all, once you’ve upgraded to the new Facebook Login, Send to Mobile works automatically without any additional effort.”

Facebook also launched a new Share Dailog for the web that supports friend and location tagging in addition to Open Graph, which puts it in line with iOS and Android.

Facebook’s announcements follow a recent Instagram update, which killed automatic sharing to Facebook. If nothing else, the company appears to be practicing what it preaches.

Images via Facebook

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