After blocking Twitter’s vine app from its site, Facebook has announced it will not allow apps access that copy one of its products or services.
The social network says that if developers want to access data from its Graph API, the information shared within the app must be easily accessible to Facebook.
"For the vast majority of developers building social apps and games, keep doing what you’re doing, said Facebook in a developer blog. "Our goal is to provide a platform that gives people an easy way to login to your apps, create personalized and social experiences, and easily share what they’re doing in your apps with people on Facebook. This is how our platform has been used by the most popular categories of apps, such as games, music, fitness, news and general lifestyle apps."
Even though the Vine app allows sharing back to Twitter and Facebook, the social network believes the vine app "replicates" its service.
"For a much smaller number of apps that are using Facebook to either replicate our functionality or bootstrap their growth in a way that creates little value for people on Facebook, such as not providing users an easy way to share back to Facebook, we’ve had policies against this that we are further clarifying today"
In Facebook’s policy, the company says that other parties may not use Facebook "to promote, or to expert user data to, a product or service that replicates a core Facebook product or service without our permission."
Twitter’s vine app would need to ask permission to have access to Facebook’s Graph API, along with any other developers who want to promote or export user data that the social network believes is replicating a Facebook product or service.
Twitter’s vine app launched last week and allows users to capture and share brief, looping videos.
The service uses the same brevity concept as tweets. Users are only allowed to capture a video in 6 seconds or less to "inspire creativity."
Vine, which was recently acquired by Twitter, says their company shares similar goals with the microblogging service.
"We want to make it easier for people to come together to share and discover what’s happening in the world," said Vine in a blog post. "We also believe constraint inspires creativity, whether it’s through a 140-character Tweet or a six-second video.
"Posts on Vine are about abbreviation — the shortened form of something larger. They’re little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life. They’re quirky, and we think that’s part of what makes them so special."
Currently, when someone tries to search for their Facebook friends on Vine, a message pops up indicating the app is not authorized to make the Facebook request.
Facebook and Twitter have a history of cutting support for each other’s service. Just last month Facebook’s Instagram suddenly cut support for Twitter photo cards.
