Facebook Terms of Use: Take them seriously!

Kara Swisher over at All Things Digital has some exclusive insights into the Ping / Facebook controversy. For those of you who don’t know, Apple recently announced Ping, a service that it’s positioning as a social network for music lovers (like what we need is ANOTHER social network).

Now social networks are pretty worthless until lots of people are members, so it’s imperitive to make it as simple as possible for new members to recruit their friends and make them members too. Historically, this has been done by importing email address books, but now there’s a new way to find people’s friends: Facebook. Facebook even gives developers an API so that applications can programmatically get your list of friends – perfect for a service like Ping to ramp up its member numbers.

And alas, that’s what Mr. Jobs et. al. tried to do. This was quickly countered by Facebook playing their Terms of Use trump card to cut off API access to Ping and Apple. They rightfully claimed that a service like Ping would cause a huge load on their server infrastructure, and without a special agreement (as the TOU dictates) they had the right to cut Apple off.

So if you’ve been unsure as to whether Facebook really enforces their rules, the answer is yes they do, and they will act quickly. If your application puts undue strain on the Facebook servers you DO need to work with them to ensure that everyone remains happy. If you’re not sure about how much server interaction your application has with Facebook, you can test your Facebook application with a tool like FriendRunner.

Load Test your Facebook Application!!

Once again, the need to load test your Facebook application before deployment has been proven out in the wild. Another company has seen their application crash and burn under a load that it either wasn’t expecting, or unable to deal with. The interesting part of this story, which seems to get told over and over, is the company that was the victim of the crash and the source of the load.

In this case, the application was Facebook’s newly released Facebook Stories application. This application allows users to tell the story about how they got onto Facebook and how it changed their life. The application became overwhelmed and eventually crashed due to the load placed on it by …

… rabid Justin Bieber fans

That’s right, I just wrote the most unlikely string of words that can show up in a blog about technology. The crash was reported by Justin himself, ironically on Twitter.

 Kids, don’t let this happen to your application. Before deployment, load test it with a tool like FriendRunner.

Update

Ahhh geez! Okay, this will teach me to trust Justin Bieber. All Facebook is now reporting that the rabid Justin Bieber fans never crashed the Facebook Stories app. Instead, he was asked to remove the tab for the application from his page because he was using it to solicit stories about himself instead of using it for the purpose it was intended for (How has Facebook changed your life?).

Okay, I was fooled, but the original story did have a believable provenance. I originally heard it from Randi Zuckerberg, who after all is the sister of …. She got it from All Facebook, which is a reliable source of great FB information.

I apologize to you dear reader, and will now make the commitment that this blog will never ever disseminate any more news about Justin Bieber, regardless of what it is or where it comes from.

FriendRunner announces customer success

FriendRunner, the cloud-based tool for load-testing Facebook applications recently announced a customer success story from Hobsons, a leading provider of educational products and services. Hobsons used FriendRunner before deploying its mySchools by Hobsons Facebook application.

To learn more about their experience with Friendrunner, the only tool available to properly load test Facebook applications, click here.