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Tonight, Facebook announced some upcoming changes to their platform. I wanted to comment about how they will affect Rock Your Firefox.

• Profile box visibility changes - This affected our default text shown before a user adds any favorites, but has already been fixed. Developers were previously told they had 10 days to adjust this, however that deadline has now been extended.
• Application Directory metrics shift to user engagement - I imagine this could only be better for us, as our statistics show that most of our users check back with the application every day. [Aside: We have fought with a similar problem on AMO of gaging popularity of add-ons based on raw download counts: People try to game the system to get into the top 5, which then gets them in for a long time as people will download anything in the top 5 without much consideration and then uninstall it. We will have new statistics to gage this by soon, including active user counts and "favorite" counts from both Facebook and AMO, which provide a much better idea of which add-ons people actually use and like.]
• Requests/Invitations deprecation - Rock Your Firefox does not allow users to send invitations to other users. A large part of that is because I expected this to happen. Application invitations are too spammy, and I didn’t think they would last long, especially with some applications abusing them by sending when the user didn’t even select friends to invite. Facebook stated that a standard tool for this will be offered, which is exciting, as we get the functionality but not the wasted time on development of the soon-to-be-deprecated system.
• No more e-mail notifications - Does not affect Rock Your Firefox.
• Newsfeed stories for everyone - As an application developer, this is very exciting. Currently, newsfeed stories generated by applications are only seen by friends that also have the application added. The only newsfeed story that has a chance of attracting new users is the generic “Foxkeh has added the Rock Your Firefox application.” If all stories have a chance of being seen, we can generate a lot more interest from users that don’t know about add-ons or don’t even know about Firefox. As a Facebook user, I really hope they have good controls so that if I don’t want to constantly see someone superfeeding their pet gift that grows into a map of places you’ve been, I don’t have to.
• Join Facebook with an application already added - Earlier this month, Facebook posted that they are working on a feature to allow users to sign up and immediately start using an application. As we have been promoting the rockyourfirefox.com URL and I suspect that several community members joined Facebook just to see the application, this will be helpful.

Overall, these changes are great for us, but I’m sure they are quite unfortunate for other applications that use functionality that will now be removed. Rock Your Firefox 0.4 is scheduled to release this Friday with two awesome new features, which I’ll blog about once they’re live.

I was reading a post about it being Facebook Platform’s 3 month anniversary and decided to do a little comparison.

* Only considers add-ons hosted on addons.mozilla.org; there are many add-ons hosted by their individual developers not taken into account.

I’m not one to get into the politics of whether Facebook Platform is good for the web. I’m more interested in what we can do to have people as excited about Firefox add-ons as they are about getting that one person who always takes forever in Scrabulous to finally go.

What can we learn from Facebook Platform? Why do people so readily add applications?

• Applications are restricted. People know exactly what an application is allowed to do within Facebook because you see a list of checkboxes when you add it. It can’t cause data loss. It can’t modify your information. Extensions can do anything they want. They can cause data loss. They can do bad things to your computer. I think that Firefox users who have never tried extensions are either: a) confused about what extensions are, or b) concerned about their security
• Applications are required to view content. If someone sends you something in an application, you often have to add that application to see it. In Firefox, we call those plug-ins. I can’t think of any extensions that you have to add in order to see content you find scattered around the web.
• You know when friends add applications. People add applications when they see something cool that a friend added. With Firefox add-ons, you don’t know what add-ons your friends use unless you use their browser or they talk about their extensions. (Although many of my friends talk about what extensions they use, I think it is fair to say this is not the norm.) This is what Rock Your Firefox tries to solve: seeing what add-ons your friends use and improving discoverability.

Having said that, I’m not saying that we should make any changes to be more like Facebook. I certainly think that extensions’ ability to modify anything is key to the innovation that we see all the time in new extensions. I think we need to find out what facets of the Firefox ecosystem are the most compelling and make people realize that everything that’s being done on Facebook could be done even better in the open web.

(Obligatory disclaimer: The above opinions are my own and are not affiliated with any entity in which I may be involved.)

People often ask “Justin, do you know where I can find awesome new Firefox t-shirt designs for 10% off that will also get me a free sheet of stickers and contribute to a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and innovation on the internet?”

Until yesterday, my answer has been “I don’t” - but I’ve finally figured out the answer: the completely revamped Mozilla Store! Just use coupon code MOZILLASTYLE for a 10% discount on your order. Foxy.

PS: I’m posting this because I think the new designs and store are awesome. Huge congrats to David, John, Sarah, and Rhian!

Rock Your Firefox, Mozilla’s add-ons application built on the Facebook Platform, launched a week ago today, and a lot has happened since then. We’ve had over 1700 people add the application with over 650 of those people adding at least one favorite add-on. Of particular interest to me is that although only 12% of the users joined in the last day, 82% of users have been active in the application in the last day - even those that added last week. I could put some of our pretty graphs here, but I’ll be lazy and just link you to these that are already done for me!

There have been a number of articles written about the application so far, and add-on authors are starting to promote the application as well.

I’ve started planning some milestones and assigning new features and bugfixes to them. I’m looking forward to seeing where the app goes in the upcoming weeks

I haven’t blogged in awhile, so I’ll try to recap the things that have happened since mid-July that I remember.

On Saturday, July 21, most of the interns took a trip to San Francisco to tour Alcatraz Island, followed by dinner in Chinatown. Pictures.

July 24 - 27 I was in Portland, Oregon for the annual O’Reilly Open Source Convention, where Mozilla was a sponsor and had a very large presence. Anywhere I went, people would start talking to me about how much they love Firefox. I had a great time meeting so many people.

The Friday that I got back, a few of us went mini-golfing (it turns out “putt putt” is not used around here). Then that Sunday, we took a trip to San Francisco and walked along Haight Street and explored Buena Vista Park to the top. We then passed through Golden Gate Park to Union Square. After that, we stopped by Coit Tower, Aquarium of the Bay, and Pier 39 before heading home. Andrew got some pictures of the sights and us.

There’s a lot planned for this week - Tuesday is the intern BBQ; Wednesday is the going away party for several of the interns (which I will unfortunately miss due to previous plans to see Avenue Q that night); Thursday is the San Francisco Giants game that we’ll be attending; and it seems like there’s something on Friday and Saturday that I can’t remember.

Last week at work was a big one for me, but I’ll talk about that in my next post soon.