How the new Facebook policy effects your apps

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Facebook introduced it's new privacy policy today and with it came a change in the way users accept your app's permissions when prompted. Previously when an app needed permission to a users Facebook account a single dialog would appear asking the user to allow the app permission to do so. With one tap the app could have permission to your Facebook account, but Facebook is trying to keep their users from inadvertently accepting permissions to apps they don't want to have access.

So now there is a second prompt to insure privacy but it might cause some users to bail out of the permissions prompt entirely and avoid the hassle - which means your app could lose some social traffic.In some cases there will actually be a third prompt if an app needs "manage" permissions.

Some good news is that they have made the dialog prompts less intrusive, and they have bundled some permissions together. But still the least amount of prompts a user will see is 2, one for read and one for write permission.

Facebook says all mobile and non-game web apps will be converted to the new auth flow automatically. No changes are required to a developer’s code.