Facebook developers can now use age, location and more to show Open Graph stories to specific users

In a nice update to Facebook’s tools, developers can now choose to show Open Graph stories only to users that meet criteria they set, such as age, country or type of content. This should help them to target those stories more effectively and avoid exposing users too young for certain content.

Facebook announced the changes on its developer blog today and provided a sample scenario using a video app as an example:

…a video app can specify that stories published by their app may only appear in countries in which they have launched. These settings can be applied against all content from the app or on a per object basis. For example, a video app can restrict stories from movies rated PG13 to viewers age 13+, and restrict movies rated NC17 to viewers age 17+

Facebook also provided new documentation for developers on the additional restrictions, which fall into three main categories: Country Restrictions, Age Restrictions and Content Restrictions.

These restrictions can be applied at an App level, filtering all content delivered by that app through that criteria, or at an ‘object-level’, allowing an app to deliver various kinds of content to users, targeting specific regions or age groups depending on the ratings applied to the story being shipped out through the app.

This all adds up to giving Facebook developers more granular control over where and who their content is being delivered to. This comes hot on the heels of Facebook allowing developers to track unique shares, clicks and reads of Open Graph stories.