Verifying Applications – a New Program Begins

As members of the Facebook Platform developer community, many of you spend a lot of time thinking about how to create new social experiences that are valuable to users. We know that you want to make sure that your applications have visibility so users can discover, try out and regularly engage with them. That’s why we’re opening registration today for our Application Verification program — an optional new program designed to provide your applications with a way to stand out and reassure users that they will provide a good experience.

Badges for verified applications will appear to users early next year, beginning in an application's About Page and the Application Directory. We'll do our part to help educate users to recognize the verification badge as a symbol for applications that are respectful, transparent and meet the guiding principles for trustworthiness. In addition, users will see more information from verified applications as we increase their allocations for communication channels such as requests and notifications, and increase visibility of their stories in News Feed.

If you are interested, read about the program details. As you prepare for verification, we hope you will take the time to consider how your application meets the guiding principles for trustworthy applications. We’ve created an integration point checklist to give you more concrete insights into how the guiding principles can play out in your application. The checklist gives you our recommendations for when to use notifications versus Feed stories, best practices on how to use requests, and more. We plan to continue to provide online resources to help you learn new ways to improve your application. And even if you don’t want to have your applications verified yet, these principles and resources should still be relevant.

Here's the process to have your application verified:

1. First, register your intention to apply for verification.
2. As soon as we can review your application in a timely manner, we will notify you via email. Initially, this may take several weeks as we ramp up the program.
3. You'll then be able to complete the verification submission form (the $375 fee for verification would be due at this time, which helps us cover some of the operational costs of the program; students and non-profits are eligible for special pricing).
4. Finally, to provide greater fairness and critical mass for users, we will grant benefits to verified applications in waves starting in early 2009.

Learn more about the Application Verification program on our Developer site.