Facebook to limit ticker activity, cut down on the noise

Facebook is tweaking its Open Graph functionality so that it will hopefully have a bit less noise. The social network, starting Wednesday, will no longer allow developers to automatically broadcast user activity in the ticker that simply informs friends that someone consumed content. That doesn’t mean that Open Graph — or the ticker — is going away. Facebook is simply limiting developers: if they want to broadcast activity to the ticker, they’ll need to use the social network’s key “built-in actions” to do so. What this means is that only central activities — like, follow, listen, read, watch — that are built into the core of Open Graph will show up in the ticker. The change should help cut down on the spammy nature that the ticker can often take on, and, perhaps more importantly, it will be clearer what sort of activities will be broadcast, so you’re not surprised when everyone knows what you’ve been doing on your computer. Facebook informed developers of the changes back in October, but they’ll start taking effect on Wednesday.