One of the most frequently used phrases regarding social media applications is "viral growth". In an ideal world, this would mean that apps would provide some value to users who would then pass it on to their friends. In reality what happened is that the primary business model rapidly became forcing users to spam all their friends in order to use an application and continually flooding every possible communication channel exposed through APIs with even more promotions. When apps were new and novel it worked well and millions of users added apps like Zombies whose only function was inviting other people to add it.
However, the incessant spam and constant barrage of useless applications quickly led to a backlash among users. More importantly, it led to apathy from developers who became disincentivized to create anything worthwhile as study by Jesse Farmer points out. Social networks quickly realized that to keep their platforms a viable ecosystem, they had to provide value for all participants from developers to end users. Recently, the most stringent ant-spam measures to date have been announced by MySpace and Facebook.
Introduced in a post by Tom of MySpace himself, the new terms state:
No incentives may be given to a member for sending a message, bulletin, comment, or any other form of communication. This includes "points," "bucks," increased standing, or even features within the app.
Facebook's guidelines have been changed to explicitly include:
[Applications cannot] require that users invite, notify, or otherwise communicate with one or more friends to gain access to any feature, information, or portion of the application.
While these new policies will inhibit the growth of spammy apps and improve the environment on various platforms, it's unlikely that it will help with another complaint about social apps, that so-called "useful" applications aren't successful. People will still want games and social interaction not office productivity apps.
But usefulness is in the eye of the beholder. Who's to say that entertaining someone for 20 minutes or facilitating hook-ups are not useful in their own way? After all, procreation is one of the most important functions that any organism can perform, or as Nick O'Neill more eloquently puts it, "Social Apps Should Get You Laid."
