Among the detractors of Facebook's new design are several of the Facebook application developers who are making a lot of noise on the developer forums. Silicon Alley Insider (SAI) featured several traffic graphs, posted anonymously by developers, that seem to indicate that application traffic has had a sharp decline since the rollout of the new Facebook design.
SAI spoke with a Slide spokesperson, Keith Rabois, who noted that any redesign is bound to show fluctuations in traffic as users get acclimated to a new look and feel. Some developers on the Facebook forums analyzed traffic graphs for popular Facebook application companies, and claimed the graphs demonstrated the same sharp decline. However, the graphs seem to indicate the same trending that Rabois mentioned: a sharp decline followed by a steadily building rebound. In the first graph, Rock You's numbers appear to have exceeded their traffic from the start of the analysis period, and Flixter's only seems to have dropped in comparison to a temporary surge.
Web stats are generally only good for viewing trends, and attempting to gauge impact based on day-to-day fluctuations can only leave developers worrying when they may not need to be. As another forum poster noted, it's usually a vocal minority complaining the loudest at any change, and that group will eventually calm down:
"Let them blow off steam, it'll all be over in a couple of weeks!"
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