Facebook changes due on the 20th Dec.

We’ve passed the 20th but..,
according to the Facebook Roadmapthere are changes due on Dec 16th. .. which seem to have been altered to the 20th!
Our apps will be affected also, but we can’t test anything until Facebook actually makes the changes….
It would be great to be able to do a β test on a separate server. Usually things just go live pretty quickly..
The outline
- All stream publishing APIs beside Stream.publish, Facebook.streamPublish and FB.Connect.streamPublish will no longer be supported (going into effect December 20)

Wall publishing will change from feed.publish to stream.publish. code changes are required.

And in the near future,
- Notifications: Application-to-user and user-to-user notifications will be removed, and instead developers will use stream, Inbox, and Email.
- Requests: Requests will be transitioned to Invites and Inbox.

The notifications in the bottom right corner will disappear (they’re still there though!) Thsi will result in slight shift in viral activity, forcing developers to use email and the stream. Request and invites will be merged with the inbox.
At the same time,
- New email permission API (developers can ask users to share their email
address)

Getting these permissions are of course the key to communicating with the user for the near future.
Honesty Box has already put a notice in red at the top of their page, “Give us your email so we can let you know when someone sends you a message.” and are actively collecting email addresses.

But we have no idea how those addresses will be used.