Facebook apps developer - be carefull with IGNORE button on requests

 One of the most important things that a facebook developer has to be concern about is facing a good viral grow implementation. Without this your possibilities of reaching a high volume of users accessing the app are very poor, including using ads to promote your app.

There are some precious tools that must be understood and be used properly by developers in order to maintain their apps growing every day. One of those tools are user requests (fb:request).

According to the post "Feedback-based allocations for requests and invites" published on Facebook Developer News page, "Applications will no longer have a static upper limit of 20 requests, but instead requests will be allocated based on how users have responded to past actions. The number of requests per application will be based on the rate that users accept and ignore requests...{}".

People receives from 3 to more than 10 or 15 request a day, and if you pay attention, most of the apps only show 2 buttons, "Confirm" and "Ignore" buttons. Most of us like to keep our accounts clean, so if we don't want to play we have no choice than ignoring...

So, let me share with you my workaround to get the less Ignored request possible on your app based on Sudha Jamthe suggestions and a simple trick that came to my mind after some research.

The idea is very simple and based on two tips:

  • Any request button (fb:req-choice) pressed on a facebook request that is not "Ignore" button are considered as acceptance buttons.
  • You can only set the URL and the name of the button.

So we created this 3 buttons :

  • Play now! - That's acceptance button, that we link to our canvas page file to make the action requested.
  • Not right now - This is added to avoid users pressing Ignore. HERE is the trick. We set the url like this:
  1. <fb:req-choice url='reqs.php' label='Not right now' />

    This way facebook doesn't take in count the pressed button as an ignore button, and the request disappear, just like Ignore button action does.

  • Block sending requests - This one is linked to our canvas page to set in our database that this user doesn't want to receive requests anymore, (at least for now), later we can ask him if he still doesn't want to receive requests...

By using this logic, we increased in less than three weeks from 16 up to 30 available request per day.

I hope that helps a little, and we can keep discussing new ways to improve and make our apps more viral!.

Thanks!!

Matias Paterlini

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