Facebook kicked off the new year with additional tweaks to its development platform as it continues to grapple with external programmers who spur adoption of their applications among Facebook members through deceitful and abusive practices.

Facebook has been battling this problem since May, when it opened its social-networking site to third-party developers interested in building applications for it.

Chief among the annoyances have been self-promotion features in applications such as bulk unsolicited e-mails and intrusive message displays. Although Facebook has made several changes in past months, the problems persist.

On Jan. 1, a Facebook official made an official blog posting titled "New Year. New Rules" in which he states that some developers have been sneakily bypassing the amount of e-mail notifications applications are allowed to send.

"Specifically, these developers have been sending notification e-mails to users for one application with another application, in order to 'pool' the total quota of e-mail notifications together," wrote Dave Morin, Facebook's senior platform manager.

In addition, other applications have been designed to trick Facebook members into inadvertently installing other applications by placing links into e-mail messages, internal notifications and the Mini-Feed feature in member profiles.

"Starting today, we'll begin blocking links in Mini-Feed, Notifications, and Notification E-mails which lead to the installation of another application in the hopes that developers focus on user experience and engagement being paramount, not deceiving users for the sake of growth," Morin wrote.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.