Today Facebook officially announced the option for allowing users to completely opt-out of the Facebook Platform and prevent applications from gaining access to their information. While many developers are rightfully concerned about the feature, we’d like to take the opportunity to thoroughly address how the new “opt-out button” functions and what it will mean for developers.

How To Turn Off The Facebook Platform

Prior to jumping into what the implications of the new button that lets you turn off the Facebook Platform and block all applications, we thought it would be useful to share how to block the Facebook Platform under the new configuration. It’s pretty easy to get to the button which says “Turn Off Platform”. We go through the three steps below:

Step 1: Click on “Edit Your Settings” under “Applications And Websites” on the new privacy settings page.

Step 2: Click on the link which says “Turn off all platform applications”

Step 3: Click on “Select All” and then the “Turn Off Platform” button

What This Means

For Users

The first thing to understand is what this means for users. Users will now be able to block all applications in only a few clicks. While much of this was previously possible, the major differentiator is that users will now be able to block all forms of app-to-user communications. Application requests, etc, will be blocked. One important thing that was clarified to us by a Facebook spokesperson was the following:

Users may choose to opt-out of of sharing their data with applications on Facebook Platform, however they will continue to see stories from applications that their friends use in their stream.

So yes, you can’t stop your friends from posting application stories, but you can choose to block them from sending you requests or any other form of “spam-like” communication from apps. However turning off the platform means users will not be able to install applications. Facebook users may also be prompted with the opportunity to turn the Platform back on. As Bret Taylor described on the developer blog today:

Users will have multiple opportunities to turn Platform back on. For example, when users who have turned off Platform click a Facebook login button in your application, they will be prompted to turn Platform back on before they can continue. Likewise, social plugins will not show any personalized content for these users until they click a “Turn Platform on” button on the plugin.

For Developers

For developers, the risk of a large number of users turning off the Platform is a real one. However, as any developer knows, five clicks is more than one, which means there’s already a significant hurdle to blocking applications. Additionally, as soon as a user sees all the applications they can no longer use, there’s a greater chance that they will stick around.

If a user blocks applications all together though, that’s one less user that application developers will have the opportunity to market to directly (through app-to-user communications). However stream stories will still be posted and developers have the opportunity to promote their application via advertisements and essentially convince users to install their applications, in turn turning the Platform back on.

So will this kill application growth? Probably not. However it’s definitely interesting to see that Facebook is letting users opt-out of one of the most integral components of the site. Do you think this will be valuable for users? If you’re a developer, what concerns do you have?

Tomorrow Facebook will be speaking with hill staffers about the company’s new privacy settings which are expected to be rolled out at some point during the day (the time of which has not been specified yet). A public Facebook event, first spotted by Mashable, describes the new event and also happens to be one of the company’s recently hired employees, Corey Owens‘, first events on the hill as a Facebook employees, which will surely be interesting.

While it will be more of an educational program, as Facebook regularly educates staffers on how to reach out to constituents using the Platform, it comes at a time when the company is under intense scrutiny. Just recently, a number of Senators teamed up to request that Facebook make their new “Instant Personalization” service opt-in.

However as we wrote yesterday, don’t expect Facebook to cave to the Senators’ demands. Instead, the company will roll out simple privacy settings that should make controlling access to date more obvious. Tomorrow we’ll find out the full details though according to Chris Cox, who announced the rollout while at the Techcrunch Disrupt conference today in New York City.

Here’s the description posted on the Facebook event page:

** This briefing is open to House and Senate staff only **

In Monday’s Washington Post, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told readers that Facebook has listened to feedback from users, legislators, and consumer groups and will be launching a new suite of simpler and easier-to-use privacy tools. Come learn about what these tools mean for your constituents and the future of sharing online. This briefing will include a Q&A session.

Today marked the third anniversary of the Facebook Platform but the day has been overshadowed by an ongoing privacy fiasco which has forced the company to redesign their privacy settings. While analysis of the privacy situation varies from person to person, it’s easy to forget the impact that the Facebook Platform has had in the past year as the company grew from 225 million to almost 500 million users.

FarmVille

If there was one word that could sum up the past year on the Facebook Platform, it would have to be “FarmVille”. The application launched just under 1 year ago and has spawned an entire ecosystem of companies trying to duplicate Zynga’s business model. In just 12 months we have watched Facebook turn into the largest gaming platform around, making it the talk of every single industry conference.

While games have been around on the platform for years, FarmVille reached levels never imagined. At it’s peak, FarmVille reached 83,755,953 monthly active users. That was on March 11th, around the time that the Platform took a (hopefully temporary) turn for the worse.

Facebook Clamps Down On Virality

Following the increased volume in spam from applications and one developer after the other exploiting viral loops on the Platform, Facebook decided to create a massive overhaul, which included a redesign of the homepage. In late October, rumors surfaced that Facebook was preparing to shut off all viral aspects of the Platform in order to clamp down on spam, among other things.

Within days the rumors were confirmed and Facebook hosted an event for top developers in Palo Alto to announce the impending changes. During that event the company announced a Platform roadmap which highlighted the changes that were coming to the Platform. Developers looked on as they learned about the death of multiple app-to-user communication channels.

It was pretty obvious that applications would be negatively affected, but how dramatic the impact would be was not yet known. Six months later it was pretty clear what was happening as Facebook turned off the viral spicket by killing notifications on March 1st. The results were felt immediately by developers.

While some developers have proclaimed their ability to still go viral (there is still a feed which provides plenty of growth opportunities), gaming the system has become significantly more challenging. Today, FarmVille’s MAU (monthly active users) is down nearly 10 percent from its peak and its DAU (daily active users) is down more than 25 percent from its peak. In fact, the application hit a new low today of approximately 20.4 million users, off more than 35 percent from its peak at the end of March.

Despite the challenges, Zynga has entered into a 5 year partnership with Facebook, the terms of which were never announced.

Controversy Surrounds The Platform

In addition to the emotional roller coaster that developers have sustained over the past 12 months, there has also been plenty of lucrative arbitrage opportunities which were eventually exposed as manipulative of users and frequently misleading. We first highlighted the situation days after the Facebook Platform’s second anniversary.

In short order, Facebook banned two ad networks from the Facebook Platform. That wasn’t the end of the controversy however. Facebook was eventually forced to modify their advertising terms and provide additional clarity as third-party ad networks pushed the limits of ads including the embedding of user data within advertisements.

Developers, ad networks, and Facebook continued a game of ping pong for at least four months until Techcrunch finally jumped in the ring, launching what is now known as the “ScamVille” controversy. In a matter of weeks, the entire Facebook ad industry was transformed and most aggressive offers, which made many developers and ad networks very wealthy, were purged from applications.

A Crossroad For The Facebook Platform

On the third anniversary of the Facebook Platform, developers and Facebook are at a crossroads. In addition to cutting down on viral channels, and stepping up its policies against misleading advertisements, Facebook has been increasingly pushing their new Credits system as an integral part of games and other applications on the Facebook Platform. In turn, a new business model has emerged, something we highlighted at the end of March.

As the company attempts to silence the privacy backlash, celebrations of the Platform’s three year anniversary will take place in privacy this time around. The Platform has now grown up and Mark Zuckerberg is attempting to steer an increasingly large (yet relatively agile) ship toward what many employees and investors hope is the promised land.

While the company has come a long way in just three years, more challenging business hurdles lie ahead. For developers, determining whether or not to build on the Facebook Platform has become increasingly complex. With a push toward the new Graph API, and the death of most app-to-user communication channels, many developers have decided to sit on the sideline through what many developers hope is a calm before the next surge.

Over the next year we’ll have the opportunity to watch how the dynamic between Facebook, developers, users, and advertisers unfolds. While the past year has been a bumpy one, hanging on to the rocket that is Facebook has no doubt proven to be an exciting ride!

Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t been speaking about the latest privacy changes, not because he’s trying to avoid the issue, but because they are working on rolling out major changes on the privacy front. In an email to Robert Scoble he stated that the company will “start talking about some of the new things we’ve built this week.” From the sounds of things, it’s going to be a relatively major overhaul.

The full text of the email is below:

Hey,

We’ve been listening to all the feedback and have been trying to distill it down to the key things we need to improve. I’d like to show an improved product rather than just talk about things we might do.

We’re going to be ready to start talking about some of the new things we’ve built this week. I want to make sure we get this stuff right this time.

I know we’ve made a bunch of mistakes, but my hope at the end of this is that the service ends up in a better place and that people understand that our intentions are in the right place and we respond to the feedback from the people we serve.

I hope we’ll get a chance to catch up in person sometime this week. Let me know if you have any thoughts for me before then.

Mark

While Tim Sparapani, Facebook’s Public Policy Director, told Kojo Nnamdi last week that new privacy settings were in the works. Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that new privacy setting are in the works and hopefully that the company will rebuild the trust of the users once the latest privacy debacle is handled.

While there is clearly an argument to support Facebook’s position up until now, we’re hoping to see changes that give users much greater control, and also avoid duping users into sharing more information, as the last privacy redesign did in December. We’ve preached the concept of giving users control on multiple occasions and continue to believe that users should have control despite the debatable issue of how important the information being exposed really is.

Facebook is under immense pressure to bring forth new changes, not only backing down on some of their aggressive new programs announced at f8. We expect Facebook to release new features which both give users greater control and making privacy control much easier. We’ll be following the topic closely as Facebook prepares to roll out their privacy upgrades this week.

For the past ten days, Facebook has stopped updating application statistics. That means all leaderboards (including our own) based on Facebook’s statistics have stopped updating and developers can’t track how their application, or competing applications are performing. While we’re assuming that the statistics will get updated shortly, this is probably the longest period of time that we’ve seen the stats stop reporting.

One potential reason for the downtime is that Facebook has reallocated resources to work on other projects temporarily over the past week and a half in order to expedite the process of rolling out new privacy settings. Alternatively, the company is simply running into problems with their stats tools, although we’d doubt that’s the source of the issue.

Over the past few days we’ve received countless inquiries about why our leaderboards are no longer updating. Unfortunately for us, all of our data comes directly from Facebook and if they aren’t updating their data, we’re not updating ours! While I hope that the stats return to normal this week, they appears to still be set on statistics from ten days ago.