Facebook App maintenance considerations

Question

If I write a Facebook App for a client (I'd probably be the "developer" working with a marketing agency, with one or more Facebook apps as market of a social media strategy), it's not just a fire and forget project, is it?

From what I've read so far, the Facebook API is still in flux, and fixes and changes that Facebook makes can break apps. So the business side of working on a Facebook App for a client probably includes some continuing monitoring of the app and fixes along the way, plus keeping track of the hosting costs and issues.

For those doing Facebook Apps now, how often does your app break? What defensive measures do you take to prevent breakage?

For development planning, what is the ratio of development time to maintenance time? And on the biz side, would you bill maintenance as it happens or a fixed cost per month?

Answer 1

It is certainly never a "fire and forget" project.

Facebook is constantly rolling out new features, deprecating existing features, and changing workflow of many key platform concepts.

I would say apps "break" every 2-3 months though there is really no predictability to when they roll out changes. For some applications, Facebook's changes have no immediate effect on the application but create opportunities to extend existing functionality. Sometimes the break only compromises part of a back-end process and won't have an immediate effect on the user. Sometimes, however, the application can become entirely inaccessible or key functions can stop working.

As for preventative measures, your best bet is to keep up to date on Facebook platform announcements, which are released on the Developer application message board. Usually changes are announced a good 30-60 days ahead of time, and usually rumored even earlier. Once they make the changes, Facebook also usually preserves support for any deprecated functions for a month to allow everyone time to make the changes, test, troubleshoot, etc. So really, in the end, by the time your app would "break" you will have more than enough time to accommodate.

My advice would be to charge on a per-update basis as needed. As a developer, you should keep up on the announcements just to stay savvy. I personally let all of my clients know when Facebook announces changes, so that they are aware ahead of time of any work needed, and will generally include my quote to make the necessary changes to their applications. If the client doesn't take action by the time the changes are rolled out, I'll send out a reminder. That way, by the time the app actually "breaks", there's been ample warning.

Answer 2

There's another aspect to this. Facebook changes it's UI almost every month. Often, a great new app concept or UI design becomes awkward or silly because Facebook just changed some aspect of the platform. For example, the most important function of any FB app is posting to the wall. The user interface, api, and policies surrounding this function have changed 3 times in the last 6 months. These design changes are the most difficult and most expensive aspect of keeping up with the Zuckerbergs.

It's been our experience that most clients don't want to sign up for maintenance of Facebook apps. Their budgets for these are small and campaign-based, so after the first month or two, they stop caring about the app. We've tried hard to change the attitude, but it's still a wall we come up against time after time.