WebProNews

Tag: facebook apps

  • Facebook Launches Advertiser Outcome Score For Audience Network

    On Tuesday, Facebook announced Advertiser Outcome Score (AOS) for Audience Network, which is described as a measurement system to evaluate publishers’ ad placements by their ability to drive outcomes for advertisers. Outcomes would be things like app installs, purchases, or registrations.

    The company says it’s providing more transparency into how placements are performing so publishers can better optimize their ads business, improve performance, and increase revenue.

    “We believe that what provides great ads experiences for people drives better results for businesses,” says Facebook’s Huifang Yin. “Over the past three years, Facebook has built our advertising systems to deliver real business results for marketers and over the last year and a half, we have extended that capability through the Audience Network. By helping our over 2.5 million advertisers connect with people who are discovering their products and services, we’re able to drive value for the overall ecosystem: more relevant ads for people, real business results for advertisers, and better yield and experiences for publishers and the people who use their apps. Furthermore, as the Facebook ads system delivers ads to real people and optimizes for advertiser outcomes, it creates an environment where fraud is more difficult to exist.”

    “Historically, ad networks have rewarded clicks and CTR as the primary metrics publishers should care about,” adds Yin. “Our system is different – we pay publishers based on the outcomes they create for advertisers. We have heard from publishers that they want to know how best to optimize in our system, and we are committed to giving our partners actionable insights so that they can grow their businesses.”

    Publishers can look at Advertiser Outcome Score in the Audience Network dashboard.

    Scores are based on a scale where one is the floor, and there is now cap (because there isn’t one on how well a placement can perform). Facebook says a strong score is eight or above. As the score improves, CPMs increase.

    The company also says native ads represent 80% of impressions in the Audience Network and are delivering strong results.

    Image via Facebook

  • Facebook App Ads Get 2 New Formats

    Facebook is now offering app advertisers new desktop video ads and a carousel format for mobile app ads. The former are available through both Power Editor and the Ads Create tool while the latter can be used through Power Editor, the API, and through Facebook’s Marketing Partners.

    The new desktop video format works similarly to those on mobile in that they’re eligible to play automatically in News Feed, they have a persistent call-to-action over the video pop-up for ad rendering on the right-hand side of the page, and they all have an end card that appears when they’re done playing. This includes options for the user to replay the video or install the app.

    Facebook desktop video ads
    Facebook lists these best practices for desktop video app ads:

    – Produce initial concepts based on creative from top-performing Facebook static ads as a starting point

    – Feature attention-grabbing content for at least the first 2-3 seconds

    – Leverage text overlays so that sound is not required to understand the content

    – Post simple and easy-to-digest video content that is very polished and engaging

    – Make the creative 15-30 seconds in length and show actual gameplay

    – Avoid reusing mobile creative assets for desktop as this can cause confusion

    – Ensure the actual desktop landing page that the creative points to is interesting and relevant

    The carousel format was already available for link ads and dynamic product ads. The new unit lets advertisers take advantage of the format (pictured at the top) for mobile app installs and mobile app engagement ads. You can feature up to five images within the unit. Facebook itself will optimize the order of the images based on relevance to each person.

    This week, Facebook also announced the first major update to Ads Manager and Power Editor since they launched.

    Images via Facebook

  • Facebook Set To Have Biggest F8 To Date

    Facebook Set To Have Biggest F8 To Date

    Facebook announced on Tuesday that developers can now register for this year’s F8 developer conference, which will take place on March 25 and 26 at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center.

    The company says this will be its biggest F8 to date, and will feature every Facebook developer product and company, including Instagram, Parse, Messenger, WhatsApp, and an opening talk on day two from Oculus’ Chief Scientist Michael Abrash.

    Facebook developers are no doubt just happy that Facebook is back to hosting annual F8 events. There was a period there when they stopped doing it.

    The invent will include over 40 sessions as well as product updates and “deep dives across all of Facebook’s breadth of developer tools, including App Ads, App Links, Audience Network, Parse, LiveRail, Login, Video, and much more.”

    Attendees can be among the first to demo the Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype and get hands-on time with Gear VR.

    Instagram’s Mike Krieger, Messenger’s David Marcus, and WhatsApp’s Brian Acton will discuss the future of communications.

    There will also be a Developer Garage exhibition area, where developers can get some one on one time with engineers for advice on design, monetization, security, analytics, etc.

    You can check out the full schedule here, and register here. They’ll be streaming the keynotes and other sessions as well as live interviews from the show floor.

    Image via Facebook

  • Facebook Gives Developers New App Testing Tool

    Facebook announced a new testing capability for developers, which enables those currently using Graph API v1.0 to preview how their app will behave using Graph API v2.0 or higher, before they actually change any code to upgrade.

    You may recall that Facebook announced at its f8 developer conference back in April that all developers have to upgrade to Graph API v2.0 or higher before v1.0 is deprecated on April 30, 2015. v2.0 and higher include features like the Tagged Places API, the Social Context API and Page Mentions.

    “We hope this testing capability makes it even easier for developers to upgrade their apps,” a spokesperson for the company said in an email.

    Facebook’s Dan Xu says in a blog post:

    When you prepare to upgrade, your first step is to see how your app behaves when it’s updated to v2.x. For some developers, this is as simple as a code change to ensure their API requests declare v2.0 or greater. But we’ve heard feedback that it’d be valuable to test how an app behaves in v2.x without making any code changes on your side.

    To make this easier, we’ve added the ability to override the applied API version for Test Users of your app. This allows you to login as a test user, and see exactly how your app will behave once you’ve migrated to v2.x.

    You can setup a version override for a Test User by going to the Test Users tab in the roles section of your app’s dashboard and selecting “Override the API version in Graph API requests for this test user”. Then, choose the version that you want applied to all API requests from that test user.

    Xu talks a little more in depth about this here.

    Image via Facebook

  • Facebook Upgrades Analytics For App Developers

    Facebook announced the launch of some new analytics features for app developers aimed at improving performance measurement and better tracking user retention.

    For one, they’ve added “label cohorts,” which let you categorize groups of people who use your app, and measure revenue, time spent on app, etc. As the company notes, you can use these for A/B testing purposes.

    “With label cohorts you can test different tactics with two different groups and then measure which performs best,” says Facebook’s Ravi Grover. “For example, you can provide 10 percent of people with a free item within your app, and then measure whether that group spends more than people who didn’t get the free item. This is just one of the many strategies this new insight can unlock – it gives you the flexibility to define your own cohorts, which makes App Insights more powerful in building your apps and measuring growth.”

    Grover lists the following examples of label cohorts a developer could use: install source, action-based, time-based, story-based, or of course creating your own.

    Facebook is also giving developers new App Event retention charts to show what percentage of people took an action for any number of days after installing an up up to 14 weeks.

    “With this data, you can determine if certain changes you made to your app resulted in a significant change in engagement,” says Grover. “From there, you have the option to run ads or make other changes as a result of knowing this granular, time-specific information. In order to take advantage of this feature, you must be logging App Events with Facebook.”

    The charts are available for all events you log.

    Image via Facebook

  • Facebook Makes It Easier For Apps To Integrate With It

    Facebook announced the launch of a new set-up flow for integrating apps with Facebook, aimed at making it easier to do so.

    The new flow is starting to roll out today. You should be able to access it here. Over the next few weeks, it will be the default experience when integrating a new app or extending your integration to a new platform.

    “In the original app-creation flow, you had to find and download our latest SDKs, create a Facebook App ID, enable the platform you were building for, and then copy and paste certain information between our docs and your development environment — all while trying to read our documentation,” explains Facebook’s Dmitry Soshnikov. “We are always trying to improve the experience for developers, and having a quick start to integrating with Facebook is one example.”

    “In the new app registration flow, we’ve drastically simplified the experience and we added interactive guides to lead you through the process of integrating an app with Facebook,” he adds. “Now, we will only display the steps relevant to your app. Additionally, SDK downloads are included inline, along with code you can copy and paste into your app.”

    Facebook has also made changes to make it easier to go to other parts of its documentation, and has setup guides for iOS, Android, Websites, and Canvas. The company says it will have guides for additional platforms in the future. They’ll also adds steps for integration with Login, Sharing, and App Links.

    Those developing on platforms (like Windows Phone) that aren’t supported by the new flow will be able to use the old flow.

    Image via Facebook

  • Facebook Launches App Ads Helper Tool, Updates App Ads, Parse SDK & Graph API

    Facebook announced some updates to App ads, the Parse SDK, and the Graph API Thursday evening. They also announced the launch of a new tool called the App Ads Helper.

    The App Ads Helper, the company says, helps you “answer common questions around your app and app ads.” The company will expand the number of questions it can answer over time. The idea is that it will help you better advertise your app on Facebook.

    Facebook said back in June that it was making the mobile app ad unit look more like its other ads, adding social context, and like, comment, and share buttons. They’ll now also be connected to a Facebook Page like other Facebook ad units – both on mobile and desktop. They’ve started migrating ads in the old format to the new one.

    As mentioned, Facebook has updated the Parse SDK.

    Owen Coutts explains on the Facebook Developer blog, “With the PHP SDK, developers can now access Parse from PHP rather than going through the REST API. Documentation has been updated with a new PHP Guide and Quickstart. This is our first SDK for a server-side language, and the first to be truly open-source.”

    They also announced the release of Graph API v2.1, along with updated iOS and Android SDKs, which work with the new version. You can read more specifically about this update here.

    Something else helpful to know is that Facebook also reportedly made some policy updates, which give developers 90 days to stop incentivizing users to like Pages.

    Image via Facebook

  • Facebook Introduces New Desktop App Ads

    Facebook Introduces New Desktop App Ads

    Facebook has been increasingly focusing on mobile over the past few year, including the introduction of mobile app install ads. These ads have helped to drive millions of users to mobile apps, but now Facebook is looking to bring those same kind of ads home.

    Facebook announced today that it’s introducing a new ad unit called desktop app ads. As the name implies, these ads will help to drive users to Facebook apps. Not only will these ads drive users to Facebook ads, but they will also help developers measure installs.

    As for the ads themselves, the new desktop app ads will appear in either the News Feed or on the right hand column of Facebook. Here’s what it will look like:

    Facebook Introduces New Desktop App Ads

    Facebook notes that developers can create desktop app ads through either the Ads Create Tool or the Power Editor. If you don’t have anybody on your team capable of creating an ad, you can also hire one of Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developers to make one for you.

    While the new desktop app ads are rolling out today, only 10 percent of advertisers currently have access to it. Facebook says that it will roll out to 100 percent of advertisers in the next few days. If you currently have access to these ads, check out Facebook’s tutorial to learn how to implement them.

  • Bing Launches Homepage Facebook App, Photographer Contest

    Microsoft announced today that it is has launched a new Bing Homepage App for Facebook, and is kicking off a contest (part of a partnership with Discovery) for photographers to get their photos feature on the search engine’s homepage.

    Photographers are encouraged to submit photos of their hometowns, and Bing will pick ten finalists, which it will announce on September 10th. Fans will be able to vote with the Facebook app.

    “As you know, every day the Bing homepage shows a beautiful image from around the world with the hope of inspiring and encouraging exploration in our viewers,” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “This is just one of many features that sets Bing apart from its competitors, and we want our fans to be a part of it. While the Hometown Homepage Photo Contest closes September 3, the app will still be available beyond that for people to submit photos to the Bing Homepage team.”

    “We’re thrilled at Discovery to team up with Bing in celebration of World Photography Day, as we both work to inspire people to explore and uncover wonders around the world each and every day,” said Conal Byrne, Vice President of Digital Media at Discovery Communications.

    The winner of the contest will be revealed on October 1st.

  • Facebook Continues To Make Timelines More Interesting

    Last month, Facebook launched the new Timeline look with more focus on interests, and let users showcase stories from apps in dedicated collections (this is all still in the process of rolling out). Today, the company announced that it is rolling out new tools to make it easier for developers to set up their apps’ Open Graph stories and timeline collections.

    “Common action and object types such as ‘video.watches’ and ‘music.listens’ no longer require configuration within Open Graph tools,” explains Facebook’s Caroline Schafer, in a post on the company’s developer blog. “To start publishing common actions, simply select the SDK that you use and paste in the sample code that we provide for each action type.”

    Documentation for this is available here.

    Facebook has also made it easier for developers to create custom actions and object types, enabling them to preview the stories that their apps can publish to the News Feed. Once a story’s configuration is finalized, developers can hit “Get Code” in the Open Graph dashboard, and past it into the app to publish the action with logged in users.

    Documentation for this is here.

    “In addition to News Feed stories, users can now add your app’s content to dedicated collections on their timeline and About page,” says Schafer. “For example, a recipe app can include collections such as ‘Recently Cooked Recipes’ or ‘Top Recipes.’ Collections can also have different layouts, such as lists, map, and gallery below.”

    Documentation for this is here.

    Developers must submit their app’s News Feed stories and timeline collections for approval, so Facebook can make sure they’re up to snuff with their quality guidelines. The review status can be seen in the Review Status section of the dashboard. Developers will also receive alerts when submissions are made, approved or returned for changes.

  • Facebook Blocks Yandex’s New Wonder App (And Twitter’s Vine) From Data

    On Thursday, Russian search company Yandex launched a new social search app for the iPhone, called Wonder. The app relied on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, iTunes and Last.fm data. Unfortunately for Yandex, Facebook pulled access to its data, which was kind of a key feature.

    In fact, Facebook has been putting the kibosh on a number of apps it sees as potential competitors when it comes to API access, as Josh Constine at TechCrunch reports, citing Twitter’s new Vine video app and Voxer as other casualties, as both were cut off from Facebook’s Find Friends API, which lets apps give users access to their Facebook friends.

    Facebook’s Platform policy says, “Competing social networks: (a) You may not use Facebook Platform to export user data into a competing social network without our permission; (b) Apps on Facebook may not integrate, link to, promote, distribute, or redirect to any app on any other competing social network.”

    It also says, “You must not include data obtained from us in any search engine or directory without our written permission.” Constine shares a statement it receive from Yandex before Facebook even blocked its access:

    We note that Yandex is not in violation of Facebook Platform Policies providing for restriction to use data obtained from Facebook in a search engine or directory for the reason that Wonder is not a search engine or a directory. Our application is a personal assistant that helps browse and organize information that is exclusively available to and associated with relevant account of the relevant user in various social networks and services.

    On the contrary, [a] search engine is conventionally understood as an information location tool which automatically indexes tens of thousands of publicly available websites, fetches information with unrestricted access and is freely accessible to any Internet user. In addition, we would like to note that Wonder requests [a] user for specific permission to access each portion of information available to the user through a social network or services and never accesses information or data which is beyond the consent, availability for or extent of permission expressly granted by the application user. It is further to be noted, that the application does not perform any automated operations, unless these are specifically permitted by the user.

    Clearly, Yandex saw this as a potential problem, and launched anyway, but based on the nature of the app, and how it is coinciding with the roll-out of Facebook’s own Graph Search, it’s no surprise that Facebook would view it as a competitor.

    The companies are reportedly in talks about how to proceed with the app, but if Facebook doesn’t budge, it’s not going to make Wonder nearly as attractive to users as it may have been otherwise (and the jury was still out on that anyway). Apparently, Wonder can still operate with the other aforementioned networks’ data (for now), and that even includes Facebook’s Instagram. The real social data, as we all know, however, is in Facebook itself.

  • Turn Yourself Into A Zombie With This Walking Dead App

    Turn Yourself Into A Zombie With This Walking Dead App

    AMC recently launched the “Dead Yourself” app for iPhone and Facebook, which uses your iPhone camera or webcam to take your photo, and gives you options to give yourself a zombie makeover.

    The network blogged about it today, with step-by-step instructions (although it’s pretty self-explanatory).

    (image)

    Check it out at DeadYourself.com.

    The show returns on February 10. AMC released this poster for the midseason premiere last week. They also announced that The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (the upcoming video game) will be released on March 26 in North America.

    More The Walking Dead fun here.

  • Facebook Modifies Its Public App Metrics Reporting

    Facebook may not be at CES, but the social network is busy readying its own announcement for next week. We don’t know what the company will be announcing, but it has one announcement this week to tide you over.

    In its weekly platform update, Facebook announced that it is changing how its API reports public app usage metrics. For the longest time, the reported metrics was just a number showing how many monthly active users any particular app had. There was no way to actually rank apps without looking through all the metrics available, or using a third party service like AppData. That’s all changing next week.

    Starting January 16, Facebook will move to reporting app usage by overall rank and active user thresholds. For example, the social network says that an app with 1.1 million MAU will now be reported as having more than 1 million users as well as being the #300 largest app. Facebook says the new metrics reporting will “provide a more consistent view of the ecosystem and highlight successful apps earlier in the lifecycle.”

    Developers need not worry about the change as the new metrics are for general reporting use only. It won’t impact the actual number of users any particular app has, and developers can still see the exact number of users their apps have in App Insights. With that being said, developers should be aware that Facebook will be adding “daily_active_users_rank” and “monthly_active_users_rank” to the application object via the Graph API and FQL to provide access to the new ranking API.

    As usual, the weekly announcements are closed out with a bug report. In the past week, Facebook received 202 bug reports with 111 bugs being accepted for further review. The social network also fixed 51 bugs. You can see the full list by hitting up the blog post.

  • Angry Birds Star Wars Released For Facebook

    Rovio announced today that its popular Angry Birds Star Wars game has been released as a Facebook app. The new app has been “upgraded” to take advantage of Facebook’s social networking capabilities. The game now features social leaderboards, tournaments, and new power-ups.

    “It’s all the fun of Angry Birds Star Wars taken to the next level,” said Petri Järvilehto, executive vice president of Games at Rovio. “You get the great Angry Birds Star Wars gameplay for free, plus you can compete against your friends to see who is the ultimate bird-flinger and Jedi Master.”

    The game still features all of the same Star Wars-inspired birds and levels, though only the Tatooine levels are unlocked at this time. The Death Star levels are labeled as “coming soon” and there are no signs of the Hoth levels to be found.

    Weekly tournaments will be staged with five new levels released every week. Tournament winners can receive in-game rewards, such as the new power-ups.

    The new power-ups are the blaster droid, saber sling, and thermal detonator. The blaster droid sends a small blaster orb sailing along with a bird. The saber sling greatly increases the distance birds can be flung. The thermal detonator is self-explanatory. In addition to the power-ups, a new “Clone Bird” ability gives players the chance to duplicate a bird of their choice.

  • Facebook’s Mobile Presence Is Getting Stronger

    In just a few short years, Facebook has dominated the Web. The site has over 1 billion users, and millions of people use the Web site for everything from playing games to connecting with friends. Now, the social network is attempting to conquer the mobile frontier, and its efforts may finally be starting to pay off.

    At the LeWeb conference in Paris this week, Facebook announced some impressive stats about its mobile operations in 2012. The company has traditionally been weak in mobile since the market started to shift to smartphones and tablets, but it looks like Facebook is starting to hit its stride if the stats released this week are any indication.

    Before getting into that, however, Facebook announced that its Web operations are still going strong. There are now over 350 apps with more than 1 million monthly active users. It can be assumed that most of these are games, but other kinds of apps are also becoming increasingly popular.

    As for mobile, it’s getting pretty impressive. Facebook announced that over 200,000 iOS and Android apps are now integrated with Facebook, including nine of the top 10 grossing iPhone apps. Speaking of which, over 45 percent of the top 400 grossing iOS apps are using the Facebook SDK in some capacity.

    Facebook notes 2012 was the year of the social lifestyle app. The introduction of Open Graph makes it easy for users to share their lives with friends, and lifestyle apps are capitalizing on that in a big way. Facebook notes that apps like Endomondo, Deezer and Shazam have seen millions of shares and impressions since integrated Open Graph.

    After living so long on the Web, it’s going to take a while for Facebook to fully transition to mobile. The stats announced this week show that the social network is off to a good start. Even so, mobile is only going to continue to grow in dominance in 2013, and Facebook has to be ready to capitalize on it. If not, some small start up could move in and steal the mobile market away from under its nose.

  • Facebook Launches A New Social Plugin For Shared Activity

    Facebook announced today that it is launching a new social plugin called Shared Activity. With the plugin, developers can give people a way to control the activity they share to Facebook from their web apps.

    “The plugin provides a simple solution for implementing the user controls required when working with Open Graph built-in actions,” explains Facebook’s Andrew Chen. “From the plugin on sites such as Airbnb, people can set the default Facebook audience for activity shared from your app, or manage the settings for stories previously published to Facebook, including selecting an audience or removing it altogether.”

    The plugin lists people’s activities published from the app to Facebook, such as Open Graph activities, Like button stories, and comment plugin activity.

    Shared Activity plugin

    “For example, when an individual uses a music app, she could modify the privacy settings, through the plugin, for specific song listening activities, without needing to go back to Facebook to control what’s shown,” says Chen. “Similarly, if a person, through a travel app, likes a restaurant or reviews a hotel, and decides that these activities should only be viewable to a select group on friends on Facebook, he can control this within the plugin as well.”

    Documentation for the plugin can be found here.

  • Facebook Turning Feedback Into A Double-Edged Sword For Developers

    Facebook likes to run a pretty tight ship. You’re in their world, and they make the rules. They do, however, take user feedback very seriously. Enough users giving an app bad feedback can force it off of Facebook until the developer can appeal the decision. The company has now realized that outright deleting apps may not be the best course of action.

    Facebook announced today that they’re making some changes to how user feedback is analyzed. They’re also changing their response to apps that receive an enormous amount of negative user feedback. Every app deserves the benefit of the doubt and Facebook is finally giving it to them.

    First up, Facebook is rolling out a “News Feed” tab on your app’s Insights page. It will display both positive and negative feedback so you can make the necessary corrections before Facebook throws your app out on the curb. The new graphs use a familiar red and green color combination to show the general outlook users have in regards to your app.

    The new Insights options perform a secondary purpose beyond giving you a general idea of how an app is performing. It’s all part of Facebook’s new “Granular Enforcement” plan that will gather feedback on each separate part of your app. In short, Facebook can now shut down a single offending part of an app instead of the entire thing.

    For example, Facebook says they can now shut down a spammy chat action instead of the whole app. It protects the developer from having their entire app wiped while simultaneously protecting users from shady practices. Developers will of course be able to appeal Facebook’s enforcement.

    What happens to apps that are just terrible across the board? Is Facebook still going to wipe them? The company says that they will now put these offensive apps into a new “Disabled Mode.” This will remove the app from Facebook, but allow the developers to tinker around with it on Facebook. Developers will have access to everything in their app including tests, settings and Insights.

    These changes are leading up to Facebook’s new discoverability model. When introducing App Center, they said that quality apps will get top billing while poor quality apps will get shuffled to the end of the list. These new Insights will help developers focus on making the kind of quality apps that will push their product to the top of App Center.

  • Bing Launches Bing News App For Facebook

    Bing announced the launch of a new Facebook app called My Bing News. The app lets you browse top stories and subscribe to categories you’re interested in.

    You can select from selected topics (Entertainment, Business, Health, Politics, Sports, etc.) or create your own. The app will pull what it deems the most important stories based on your interests from sources across the web to your personal page on Facebook.

    This could be a new way for Bing to capture some users who are already using Facebook, even if they don’t always go to Bing for their everyday search needs.

    “Integration with Facebook makes it easy to check the news while you’re checking in on your friends, and easy to share what you find with others,” says Nathan Penner, Senior Program Manager on the Bing News team. “You’re in control over what and how you share. You can share and comment on an individual article, or, if you choose, enable sharing as you subscribe to topics and read stories. It’s up to you.”

    Your friends can easily read what you share without having to install the app.

    My Bing News is currently in Beta.

  • Facebook Improves The App Dashboard

    Any Facebook developer is no doubt well acquainted with the app dashboard. Long time developers know the ins and outs like the back of their hand. On the other hand, new developers may feel intimidated by all the options. To make things easier for both, Facebook has announced some changes to the app dashboard platform.

    Facebook announced two major changes to the app dashboard yesterday evening that aims to simplify the process of configuring and submitting apps. The settings page received a large number of updates while the App Center section was outright replaced.

    The settings page received the largest facelift so that developers have access to what they need most when they need it. To that end, the canvas settings are now in basic settings so developers don’t forget to alter the size of their app. The Auth Dialog is now in Permissions to better reflect its nature. The Android integration fields were also made easier to use.

    Facebook Improves The App Dashboard

    The other change sees Facebook replacing the App Center section with the App Details page. The pages are mostly the same with the App Details page only serving to consolidate the options under the old App Center section. The page has all the previous options like promotion text, images, description and more. It also adds an App Center submission link to the page so that developers can easily add their latest creation to Facebook’s growing app marketplace.

    Facebook Improves The App Dashboard

    Facebook is always changing around the app dashboard so don’t think this will be the last. They will continue to monitor developers’ needs and change things around accordingly. You can check out the new app dashboard now and see how you like the changes.

  • Facebook Lets You Mention Tag Friends In Messages Within Apps

    Facebook announced a new Open Graph feature today, which lets users mention-tag friends in messages within apps.

    “With this frequently requested feature, companies like foursquare can implement user mentions that work like they do in posts on Facebook,” explains Facebook’s Cindy Li, on the company’s Developer Blog. “When people mention a friend in an Open Graph app, the story on Facebook links the person’s name to their timeline, and their friend will receive a notification. The story will also be added to the friend’s timeline or, if enabled, to timeline review. There are no privacy changes associated with this new feature.”

    In fact, Foursquare is talking up the feature itself.

    “Want to let a friend know that you’re trying the dish they recommended, invite them to join you at the bar, or let the world know you’re hanging out with them? You can mention them in your foursquare check-in, and automatically tag them on Facebook and Twitter too!” says Foursquare’s Talisa Chang.

    Mention tagging on Foursquare

    Facebook points out that mention tagging works differently than action tagging. The former can be used when users want to reference friends in their messages, and the latter, when people are performing actions together (such as running together or going to a restaurant together).

    Here’s the difference in how they appear on Facebook:

    Tagging types

    Developers looking to implement mention tagging can find the documentation here.