Arrested for load testing your Facebook app??

bill-gates-arrested-mugshot1 Yes, it sounds crazy that you could get arrested for load testing a Facebook application, but that’s the implication for what’s been reported on All Facebook.

All Facebook reports that Power Ventures, creator of the social network aggregator Power.com is being sued by Facebook for violating their Terms Of Service. Power.com allows users to log into multiple social networking sites simultaneously – you log into their service and they log into the sites automatically. The problem is that Facebook has a very clear prohibition in their TOS against accessing their service by automated means, which is exactly what Power.com is doing. How Facebook sees this as a criminal act seems kind of crazy, but that’s exactly what’s happening.

So what does this have to do with load testing? Everything! The Facebook TOS (as well as a few other technical hurdles) prevent you from hooking a standard load testing tool up to Facebook to load test your newly created Facebook app. Kids, don’t try this at home, lest you get arrested. Better stick with a dedicated tool like FriendRunner that allows you to load test your Facebook app outside of the Facebook infrastructure.