Facebook revealed their roadmap yesterday and it includes a number of changes for developers. Inside Facebook has a create summer here.
I think the biggest change is the consolidation of communications into the Facebook inbox. Facebook Invites and Notifications are going away and communication will be divided into Inbox communication and Email. It looks like both channels will feature an opt-in requirement, making app to user communications very challenging in the future.
I think the consolidation of communication is probably a good thing. Everytime I see a screenshot of someone’s Homepage I always see hundreds of ignored invites and notifications. I don’t know that the new system will fix that but it should allow users to find these types of communications centrally.
The other change is around the placement of Bookmarked Applications. It looks like these will be moving from the task bar to right side bar where the feed filters are located now. Its not clear where the feed filters will be going or how often they are used ( I suspect they are not being used effectively ).
All of these represent another UI change for users though and Facebook has indicated they want to roll-out the changes by the end of the year. As always it will be interesting to see the reaction from users to these changes…
