Facebook's Extended Profile: GOOD for Marketers and App Developers

Ever since Facebook first announced that they would be introducing the extended profile feature, allowing people to 'hide' application profile boxes in an additional section to their profile, the social media blogs have been frothing at the mouth on how this is going to ruin the viral spreading of applications. 

I completely disagree.

Facebook initiated the change because users were starting to get annoyed with the clutter of their profiles when they had loads of application boxes, with users apparently claiming that there was too many to just go and delete the boxes individually. 

So, we had a situation where users were either:

1. Not authorising profile boxes in the first place

2. Authorising profile boxes, but regularly deleting some boxes to prevent clutter

3. Authorising profile boxes and not deleting them, causing clutter.

4. Not installing apps at all

How's this change going to effect these four segments of user?

(1) - these users now have more incentive to add profile boxes, as they know that they can keep them in their extended profile if necessary and keep their main profile nice, clean and tidy.

(2) - instead of deleting profile boxes altogether (which I used to do), this segment will now be able to simply move them (or leave them) into their extended profiles, in the knowledge that they can keep adding apps without increasing the clutter of their main profiles.

(3) - this group is now happier, as the clutter's been removed, meanwhile their top apps are on show and all the other apps they love adding are still in their extended profile. 

(4) - there may be a portion of these users who were put off from installing applications at all because of the clutter they saw on other people's profiles. Once they see this clutter cleaned up, more of them may be willing to install applications themselves.

So, according to my hypothesised behaviour changes, this will in fact make users more likely to install applications. Moreover, users' top applications will still be shown in the main profile section, and if the profile box is relevant enough it will be placed in a good position by the user themselves. 

Even better, those favourite and useful applications will now be even easier to see as they won't be surrounded by loads of clutter!

Plus, if people are interested it's very easy to click to see the rest of the applications on the page (it doesn't take you away from the profile, just displays the apps at the bottom of the page). 

This is definitely a good move for users, and in the end a good move for application developers who are providing real value to users.