In search of “frictionless” sharing, Facebook is putting up a barrier to entry on items your friends want you to see–that is, they’re creating friction. Even if it’s just a onetime inconvenience, any barrier to sharing breaks sharing. The barriers will keep popping up as more content publishers create social apps that have to be authorized before you can view their content.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg describes how Facebook will connect people to media based on the strengths of their connections to other people.
I’m afraid to click any links on Facebook these days.
No, it’s got nothing to do with the spam attack and the flood of nasty images making their way into news feeds all last week. Instead, it’s because the slow spread of Facebook’s Open Graph scheme is totally ruining sharing.
I know you’ve seen this at the top of your news feed: a list of stories your friends have been reading. Or, simply, a single post with a great headline leading to a story that you’d really like to read. So you click it, because your friend shared it, and you really want to read it. And instead of the story, you get this:
I want to read a story, not install an app.
If your friends are using an app like The Guardian or The Washington Post’s new Social Reader, you’ll get an intercept asking you to authorize the original site’s app so that you can read the story. And, of course, so that every story you read will start being shared automatically on Facebook, thanks to the magic of Open Graph!
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