Facebook is cleaning up Open Graph actions in order to make the user experience less spammy and more uniform across the site.
First announced back in October 2012, Facebook says they will begin to implement the new Open Graph action guidelines on Wednesday, February 6th.
“Starting today, custom actions that automatically publish back to Facebook as a person consumes content in your app will no longer be approved. We will only allow apps that use our built-in actions to automatically publish stories as content is consumed. With built-in actions, we understand the structure of the information and can ensure a better user experience by specializing story formats that can help set user expectations,” said Facebook back in October.
Those “built-in” actions include “like,” “follow,” “listen,” “read,” and “watch.”
Basically, Facebook wants to provide a consistent user experience, and allowing apps to publish stories that use actions like “view” and other custom actions doesn’t fall in line with that goal. So if your app publishes custom actions every time someone simply consumes content, you need to switch over to a Facebook-approved “built-in” action.
Here’s what Facebook had to say in a developer note:
We will no longer show Custom Open Graph actions that were published simply by a user consuming content. If you own one of these actions and it was previously approved, you will have received an email from us. Developers should stop publishing these actions as doing so will return an error starting February 6th.
So users’ news feeds and tickers will still be populated with plenty of Open Graph actions, but decidedly less than before. Users will no longer see confusing custom actions, which will make feeds seem less spammy and more useful.
[h/t All Things D]