If your small business has a presence on Facebook, and it certainly ought to, you should know about a pending policy change set for this week.
On April 30, Facebook will no longer allow third-party apps to export your data — including your Facebook contacts, profile photos and messages — into other applications.
So now is the time to update all your apps that draw on data from the Facebook well. You might want to try some new apps too, before Facebook erects the wall.
LinkedIn users faced a similar scenario last July. The website designed to facilitate interaction among professionals limited to a few development partners those companies allowed to use its API to build hiring, marketing or sales lists.
Left out in the cold were app-makers such as Nimble, which offers a customer relationship management (CRM) app that aggregates contact information and other data from social media sites including LinkedIn and Facebook.
Obstacles created by such efforts from Facebook, in this instance, are limited in terms of damage. However, Nimble CEO Jon Ferrara told Small Business Trends that’s because, today, users should know they need to grow their presence across the spectrum of social media sites, including Facebook, but also Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and the many others.
Be sure to update apps that need updating before Facebook pulls this particular plug, and don’t worry about it, Ferrara added, also cautioning, “You never know when the next wall goes up.”
“In today’s world, it’s dozens of different platforms that we use,” Ferrara said. “You shouldn’t focus only on one social media site.”
Small businesses create a presence on the plethora of social media platforms available to them. Cast a wide net, Ferrara advised, so you can eventually tighten your focus onto those who are truly important for your business.
“Today companies not only have to build brands, they need to engage and build,” Ferrara added. And social media is key to this effort.
Nimble is a customer relationship management system co-founded by Ferrara in 2009. A previous co-founder of GoldMine, an early pioneer in CRM, Ferrara has said “I have been doing CRM and SFA longer than those acronyms have existed.”
Facebook Mobile Photo via Shutterstock
So they want their users all to themselves. The reason people use Facebook is that it integrates with everything. Once they take that out, they can watch how their site become more like Friendster that will be forgotten once a new shiny social network takes the scene.
Facebook is a public company now. They care for their shareholders. The only good thing about facebook is building your brand name.
I wonder how restrictive this will actually be. I can’t imagine that they would completely shut off exporting of information, it would make twitter absolute king in third party applications.