Hell hath no fury like a Facebook scorned.
Or, at least, Facebook doesn't seem to be very keen on allowing apps to tap into Facebook's platform if they contain similar features as Facebook's own apps and services. Case in point: MessageMe, a full-featured messaging app that launched just last week and rocketed to second-place honors within its category on Apple's App Store.
Likely due to the similarities between MessageMe and Facebook's own Messenger app, Facebook has since decided to cut off MessageMe's "Find Friends" feature. Which is to say, users will no longer be able to search for Facebook friends of theirs also happen to use MessageMe via the app — doing so pulls up zero results and, on the iOS app at least, an error message that states, "The operation couldn't be completed."
As for Facebook's reasoning behind why it's cutting off MessageMe's access, company representatives haven't offered up any elaboration as to what might be going on. MessageMe representatives appear mum as well, although co-founder Arjun Sethi did tellMashable's Anita Li that the company expects to have updates regarding the situation on Tuesday morning.
This isn't Facebook's first dance when it comes to hindering the functionality of similar social networking apps. The same treatment happened to the App Store's top free social networking app, Vine, in January of this year, although Facebook was much quicker about its response than it has been with MessageMe.
It took Facebook less than 24 hours to cut off the friend-finding access of Twitter's video-themed social app. Launch-day users of Vine quickly found themselves without any way to find out which Facebook friends of theirs were also using the app, putting a bit of a nail in the tire of the app's social networking functionality.
While Facebook didn't directly state the reasoning for pulling Vine's plug, Facebook director Justin Osofsky did post a blog update the very next day in an attempt to clarify the company's "platform policies."
"For a much smaller number of apps that are using Facebook to either replicate our functionality or bootstrap their growth in a way that creates little value for people on Facebook, such as not providing users an easy way to share back to Facebook, we've had policies against this that we are further clarifying today," Osofsky wrote.
As for the "clarifying" bit that Osofsky mentioned, he specifically called out the section of Facebook's official Platform Policies document that states, "You may not use Facebook Platform to promote, or to export user data to, a product or service that replicates a core Facebook product or service without our permission."
While we can't say for certain that MessageMe falls into the same category, it hardly seems just coincidental that it, and other popular apps that go up against Facebook's, soon find themselves without the access to Facebook they once had — or had hoped to have.
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