Facebook to reduce auto-shares from third-party apps

MENLO PARK, Calif., May 27 (UPI) -- Facebook said it will reduce the number of auto-shares on users' News Feeds making it an opt-in feature and instead favoring only explicitly shared stories.

Facebook said user feedback suggests that "people often feel surprised or confused by stories that are shared without taking an explicit action." Third-party apps many times share updates without any action required from users. Spotify, for example, will tell a users' friends what music they are listening to.

Posts and status updates that are explicitly chosen by users have better circulation as compared to auto-share updates. While auto-shares will still exist, they will not appear on News Feeds as often.

While Facebook seems to be taking a tough stand against third-party apps, Peter Yang, from Facebook's product marketing team, provided a number of alternatives for such apps to appear on feeds, such as the Send to Mobile feature.

"Send to Mobile gives people a shortcut to install your mobile app when they log in with Facebook to your website. For example, when people log in with Facebook to Rdio on the web, Send to Mobile will display a notification in a person's Facebook mobile app to download and install Rdio. Best of all, once you've upgraded to the new Facebook Login, Send to Mobile works automatically without any additional effort," said Yang.

Facebook will also make the Like button appear on mobile apps. This will give users the chance to share content from their apps with a single tap. The feature is now available for iOS users but Facebook said it was planning a wider rollout soon.