WebProNews

Tag: Open Graph

  • Facebook Adds New Tags For Publishers To Increase Likes, Follows

    Facebook announced the launch of two new Open Graph tags for publishers and journalists (OG:Publisher and OG:Author). These allow publishers and story authors to get more organic likes and follows.

    “As mentioned in our documentation, media publishers should include Open Graph tags in their article’s HTML to generate better previews of their content when shared on Facebook,” notes Facebook’s Voja Katich in a blog post.

    That documentation can be found here.

    With the publisher tag, a publisher can link an article to its Facebook page, and when the article is shared in the News Feed, a “Like” button is displayed so people can like the actual Page. The author tag works pretty much the same way, except instead of a “Like” button or the Page, it includes a “Follow” button for the author’s Facebook profile.

    Follow tag

    The buttons only appear for those who haven’t already liked the page or followed the author.

    In the same blog post, Facebook also announced that it is adding new requirements to make it easier for the company to review apps and Open Graph submissions. There are also some updates to using the Facebook Android SDK with ProGuard and the Graph API for events page posts. Read about the updates here.

  • Share Dialog Comes To Facebook For iOS SDK

    At its Mobile Developer Conference in April, Facebook announced that it would be pushing Open Graph in a big way on mobile going forward. Part of those plans involved the Share Dialog – a tool that allows users to share on Facebook without having to login. It was only available as a limited beta at the time, but now all iOS developers can take advantage of it.

    Facebook announced on Monday that the native Share Dialog is now available on the Facebook for iOS SDK. Fortunately, developers will not have to jump through any hoops to integrate it into their apps. The native Share Dialog is a single line of code that can be easily implemented.

    Here’s what developers can look forward to when implementing the Share Dialog:

    The Share Dialog offers a lightweight and consistent way to enable sharing from your apps. People now have the option to share activity from apps through this dialog without needing to login to Facebook first. This eliminates 1 – 3 extra steps required for login when sharing via the feed dialog.

    The Share Dialog further improves upon the iOS 6 share sheet by adding support for publishing Open Graph actions to make it easier for people to tell their stories on mobile. In addition, people can now tag friends and share where they are enabling them to share in a more meaningful and engaging way, while helping even more people connect with your app.

    Back in April, Facebook said that the Share Dialog would also be making its way to Android. Unfortunately, nothing was said about that on Monday. For now, only iOS developers can take advantage of the native Share Dialog, but we can hope that an Android beta or release isn’t too far behind.

    If you want to learn more about the Share Dialog, check out the documentation.

  • Facebook Enhances Open Graph On Mobile, Updates iOS SDK

    At the Facebook Home unveiling, Mark Zuckerberg said that people are increasingly consuming content on mobile. It’s true for Facebook as is it true for just about everything else. That’s why Facebook needs to step up its mobile game, and it did just that today.

    At its Mobile Developer Conference in New York City, Facebook announced that Open Graph is coming to mobile in a big way. The first step is making sure everybody can integrate Open Graph into their mobile apps without having to deal with the complexity of the Graph API. The answer is the Object API – tools that let developers “directly create Open Graph objects” while no longer needing “to host webpages with Open Graph tags.” The new API is available to both mobile and Web apps so that nobody is left out.

    To make things even easier, Facebook is also introducing the Object Browser. It’s a “simple visual interface that helps you easily interact with the object data you publish.” For more on the Object API and the Object Browser, check out Facebook’s documentation.

    One of the core tenets of Facebook is sharing, and the social network is making it even easier on mobile with the Native Share Dialog. This particular tool allows people to share in-app actions without having to open or log into the Facebook app. It’s also incredibly easy to implement as it only requires a single line of code. The Native Share Dialog is available starting today in a limited beta on iOS with Android support coming soon. Check out Facebook’s documentation for more info.

    Users can look forward to an even friendlier Facebook mobile login experience as well as the social network is rolling out a number of enhancements to make things faster and more secure. The first is that Facebook has rebuilt its Login Dialog on mobile and Web to make it 20 percent faster. All Login Dialogs on mobile and non-game Web apps will be automatically upgraded to the new dialog today, but mobile apps can get even faster dialogs in the latest iOS and Android SDKs. If you want more info on Login Dialogs, check out Facebook’s documentation.

    As for security, Facebook has split Facebook permissions in mobile apps into two separate dialogs. The first is a mandatory dialog that asks users to share their Facebook data with the app. The second asks users if the app can post content to their Facebook wall on their behalf. In the second dialog, users can either agree, skip the step or customize which people the app can share stories with.

    On a final note, Facebook also released the latest version of its SDK for iOS. Version 3.5 of the iOS SDK includes support for all the above enhancements. The latest SDK only supports iOS 5 and above. You can download it here.

  • Facebook Retires The REST API For New Apps

    In late 2011, Facebook said that it would retiring the REST API to focus all of its efforts on the Graph API. Developers had over a year to make the jump, and now Facebook is finally pulling the plug.

    Facebook announced today that the REST API no longer available for new apps. Going forward, all new apps on Facebook must use the Graph API. Apps created after April 10 will receive an error code 3 upon trying to call the REST endpoints.

    So what does this mean for all the currently existing apps using the REST API? Facebook says those apps won’t be affected, and can continue to use the API. Of course, Facebook would really like it if developers made the jump to the Graph API. If enough developers make the jump, Facebook may even be able to fully retire the REST API so that all apps are on the same page.

    If you have yet to make the switch to the Graph API, you might want to check out the stellar improvements and features Facebook has been introducing to it lately. In fact, Facebook just launched a few more Open Graph tools to help make users’ timelines more interesting.

    As per tradition, Facebook also released its latest bug report. Since last week, 70 bugs were fixed, and 72 were accepted for further review. You can check out the full bug fix list at the blog post.

  • Facebook Adds 9 New Open Graph Actions for Lifestyle Apps

    Today, Facebook is announced nine new Open Graph actions for lifestyle (fitness, books, movies & TV) app.

    Starting now, developers can start incorporating “run,” “walk,” and “bike” for fitness apps, “read,” “rate,” “quote,” and “want to read” for books apps, and “rate,” and “want to watch” for movies and TV apps.

    Many popular apps in these categories have already added these Open Graph actions. They include Cyclemeter, Endomondo, Jawbone UP, Log Your Run, MapMyRun, Nike, Runkeeper, Runmeter, Runtastic, SPLIT Multisport GPS, Walkmeter, Bookshout!, GoodReads, Kobo, Random House Inc.’s BookScout, Rotten Tomatoes, Hulu, Flixster, Fandango, and Crackle.

    “This improves developers’ ability to publish the types of activities that people want to share,” they say.

    On Thursday, Facebook unveiled its huge news feed redesign that puts more emphasis on visuals and highlights big, bold stories inside the feed. Facebook says that they’ve created “beautiful” news feed stories to highlight these new actions.

    As always, Facebook will check to make sure any new apps using these actions. Facebook has also released some tips for developers on how to make the most of the new news feed.

    “All apps that use these new actions will be reviewed to ensure they meet our quality criteria. Any apps that previously used custom actions to represent this type of sharing will need to move to these new actions by July 10, 2013,” says Dan Giambalvo in a Developer blog post.

    Last month, Facebook initiated a huge cleanup on Open Graph actions in order to make the user experience more uniform and a little less spammy. In this cleanup, Facebook got rid of the ability for custom actions to automatically publish back to Facebook as people consume content. Now, Facebook only allows apps that use built-in actions (like, follow, listen, read, and watch) to automatically publish.

  • Facebook Cleans Up Open Graph Actions – Less Spam, More Consistency

    Facebook is cleaning up Open Graph actions in order to make the user experience less spammy and more uniform across the site.

    First announced back in October 2012, Facebook says they will begin to implement the new Open Graph action guidelines on Wednesday, February 6th.

    “Starting today, custom actions that automatically publish back to Facebook as a person consumes content in your app will no longer be approved. We will only allow apps that use our built-in actions to automatically publish stories as content is consumed. With built-in actions, we understand the structure of the information and can ensure a better user experience by specializing story formats that can help set user expectations,” said Facebook back in October.

    Those “built-in” actions include “like,” “follow,” “listen,” “read,” and “watch.”

    Basically, Facebook wants to provide a consistent user experience, and allowing apps to publish stories that use actions like “view” and other custom actions doesn’t fall in line with that goal. So if your app publishes custom actions every time someone simply consumes content, you need to switch over to a Facebook-approved “built-in” action.

    Here’s what Facebook had to say in a developer note:

    We will no longer show Custom Open Graph actions that were published simply by a user consuming content. If you own one of these actions and it was previously approved, you will have received an email from us. Developers should stop publishing these actions as doing so will return an error starting February 6th.

    So users’ news feeds and tickers will still be populated with plenty of Open Graph actions, but decidedly less than before. Users will no longer see confusing custom actions, which will make feeds seem less spammy and more useful.

    [h/t All Things D]

  • Facebook Login Can Now Keep Kids Out Of Your Age Restricted App

    Do you operate an age restricted app or Web site? Do you wish you could use Facebook Login while keeping underage users out? If you answered yes, Facebook has just the thing for you in this week’s Operation Developer Love update.

    Facebook announced that Open Graph has now been updated with age range. The feature has been available for apps on Facebook.com for a while now as it helps keep younger users out of content that’s more appropriate for 18 or 21-year-olds. Now those who operate apps and Web sites that use Facebook login can use age range to offer the super convenient Facebook Login feature while keeping children out. For more information on how to implement this feature, check out the documentation.

    The Developer Contact Settings has also been updated to allow for configuration of alerts. In short, developers can choose which type of alerts Facebook can send them via email and Facebook notifications. Developers can change begin cutting down on Facebook email spam here.

    Finally, Facebook is updating its ad policy to reduce the amount of text on images. The new rule states that text overlays can only take up 20 percent of the image. The reasoning is that Facebook ads should feature “photos and images that are more engaging to users.” The new rule applies to all ads in the news feed as well as Mobile App Install Ads.

    In the weekly bug report, 238 bugs were reported and 43 were fixed. Furthermore, 97 bugs were accepted for further review. You can check out the full fix list at the blog post.

  • Facebook Details App Discovery In Graph Search

    Facebook became the center of attention this week with its Graph Search announcement. The new feature allows users to search for people, places and things within Facebook using a variety of parameters. It will no doubt benefit the end user, but how will developers make the best of it?

    In its weekly Operation Developer Love update, Facebook said that developers will be able to increase their app discoverability by using Graph Search. The social network was already helping apps along with last year’s App Center, but Graph Search may just prove to be more useful. Here’s how Facebook explains it:

    Apps are now more discoverable on Facebook with Graph Search. In addition to showing up in search results based on your app’s name, they can show up in search results based on criteria like “strategy games my friends play” or “apps my friends who live in San Francisco use.” To optimize your app for Graph Search, please make sure your app details are up-to-date and that your app is properly categorized.

    Developers who have yet to sign up for the Graph Search beta can do so here.

    Beyond the above Graph Search tips, Facebook also announced support for larger images for links in the news feed. In short, developers can now use images that are 200x200px or larger in links. All you have to do is upload the image and tag it appropriately. Facebook will crop and downsample it automatically. Before you start uploading that 2560×1600 image, however, you might want to check out the documentation and best practices.

    As for this week’s bug activity, 237 bugs were reported, and 33 bugs were fixed. Furthermore, 67 bugs were accepted for further review. You can check out the full list at the blog post.

  • Facebook Introduces Custom Open Graph Stories With Flexible Sentences

    As a Facebook developer, are you frustrated by the rigid structure of Open Graph sentences? Facebook has a standard that it applies to every story so that each action is described in the same manner using the same action verbs. Honestly, it can get a little boring, and maybe even a little confusing. That’s why Facebook is now letting developers change up the sentences in custom Open Graph actions.

    Facebook announced that its introducing flexible sentences into Open Graph. The new feature will allow developers to customize the Open Graph stories that appear on user’s walls. As an example, Facebook used the app, Songkick, that allows users to find out when concerts are playing near their home. Here’s how the app would normally publish a story on Facebook:

    Facebook Custom Open Graph Stories Flexible Sentences

    As Facebook points out, the above story lacks context. It doesn’t actually let people know that Songkick is a concert app. With flexible sentences, the developers can now let people know exactly what the app does.

    Facebook Open Graph Flexible Sentences

    For even more control, Facebook has updated the configuration tool to list the most frequently used story formats first so developers know which ones will require customization.

    Facebook Open Graph Flexible Sentences

    Facebook notes that flexible sentences aren’t available for all Open Graph actions. Developers can only change the wording on custom actions. Built-in actions, which comprise the majority of Open Graph actions, will remain unchanged to provide a consistent experience across Facebook.

    Developers will gain access to flexible sentences today, and users will begin seeing them soon. If you want to learn more about flexible sentences, check out the documentation.

  • Facebook Lumps Breaking Changes Into Single Quarterly Updates

    For the past two years, breaking changes introduced to Facebook have been on a three month schedule with new changes announced each month. Developers had 90 days to implement the changes before they became permanent fixtures of the Facebook development platform. 2013 is bringing a new change to that schedule that will give developers more time to address these breaking changes.

    Facebook announced that its bundling breaking changes into a single quarterly update. Now developers will know every single breaking change being introduced to the platform for the quarter on the same day instead of having to wait for new updates each month. This means that developers will have the full quarter to implement all of the breaking changes without having to worry about new changes being introduced all the time.

    The change to a quarterly schedule will start in April when the breaking changes for July are announced. For now, developers will want to focus on implementing the following breaking changes scheduled to go live in April:

    Removing ability to POST to USER_ID/questions
    As it’s no longer possible for users to create questions, we will remove this functionality from the Graph API. POSTs to USER_ID/questions will fail.

    Removing version property/column
    We will remove the ‘version’ column from the ‘group’ FQL table and the ‘group’ Graph API object.

    Announced back in October, a number of breaking changes will also become permanent on January 9. Developers will want to make sure they have taken care of the following before then:

  • Removing unused splash_screen_url and gamebar_image_url properties
  • Removing Dashboard REST API methods
  • Using canonical URLs when fetching data using link_stat table

    • Finally, 115 bugs were reported this week, and 54 were accepted for further review. Twenty-free bugs were also fixed. You can check out the full list at the blog post.

  • Facebook Graph API Gets New Page Metrics

    Facebook Graph API Gets New Page Metrics

    Facebook has been on a quest – to make the Graph API the best it can be. In that tireless pursuit, the social network has added a number of new features and functionality to the API to help developers get the most out of Facebook. The latest update to the API isn’t groundbreaking, but it will be useful nonetheless.

    The latest update coming to the Graph API are two new page metrics for benchmarking. The feature was announced in October as part of Facebook’s rollout of global brand pages. At the time, Facebook had this to say about it:

    In addition to providing better localized experiences for your customers, we want to make it easier for you to measure your audience in each country as well as benchmark your brand against other brands you care about. Later this year we will include the country-level fan counts for all Pages (both those using the Global Pages framework as well as Pages that haven’t transitioned to the new framework) publicly in our API. This will enable your internal teams to track how each market is performing, as well as to compare your fan base on a country-by-country level with other Pages on Facebook by accessing the data available via our API.

    Now the feature is available in the API, and Facebook has some more information on the feature. For once, the metrics included in this first iteration are like count and PTAT (people talking about this). Facebook will take this information and allow brands to compare it to other brands to see which products are being talked about more on Facebook. To access this new information, just hit up the new ‘global_brand_like_count’ and ‘global_brand_talking_about_count’ fields on the Insights object.

    As for the weekly bug report, 288 were reported and 37 were fixed. Facebook has also accepted 72 bugs for further review. You can check out the full list by hitting up the blog post.

  • Facebook Announces Breaking Changes For March

    You’ll have to forgive the Facebook team this week. There’s not really much of an Operation Developer Love update presumably due to the team being in Paris this week for the LeWeb 2012 conference. With that being said, the social network did outline the next group of breaking changes that will be going into effect in March of next year.

    First up, however, is a look at the December breaking changes that will be going into effect today. Developers had a few months to implement the following changes, but there might be one or two in the list that you may have missed.

  • Removing the Static FBML Page tab app
  • New policies for desktop web games off of Facebook.com
  • offline_access permission removal
  • New security restrictions for OAuth authorization codes
  • Graph API will return full Custom Open Graph objects
  • Stripping HTML from Page description field

    • As for March 2013, there’s only three breaking changes that developers will need to keep track of. The first is that developers will no longer be able to access mailbox FQL tables without a user session. Next, Facebook will no display display apps under /me/accounts/ in the Graph API. The new location is /me/applications/developer/. Finally, graph.facebook.com will no longer redirect users to the Graph API documentation. As always, you can stay on top of this information and more by checking out Facebook’s developer roadmap.

    Perhaps mirroring the lack of any real development news, the bug report is equally barren. While 202 bugs were reported, only 20 were fixed. That being said, 59 bugs were accepted for further review. You can check out the full fix list at the blog post.

  • Open Graph Gets Mobile Insights From Facebook

    Open Graph is the best possible way for publishers and brands to reach an audience on Facebook. The only problem is that Insights for Open Graph are only available for desktop apps. There hasn’t been a dedicated mobile solution until now.

    Facebook announced today as part of its weekly Operation Developer Love that insights for Open Graph “publishes, impressions and referral clicks on mobile devices” were now available. Developers will be happy to know that the new mobile Insights can be viewed by platform so they can see if their iOS or Android app is getting more impressions.

    Open Graph Gets Mobile Insights From Facebook

    Speaking of Android, the social network just released an update to its SDK 3.0 Beta for Android. The update includes a number of API changes. You can view the change log here, and download it from GitHub here.

    Back in August, Facebook launched a new Payments Reporting API that would see the old email reporting system required. That is still the case, but Facebook has provided a new tool to download payment reports without having to call the API. Just head over to the Company tab in the Settings section of the developer site to download the reports.

    On a final note, 250 bugs were reported to Facebook over the last week. Forty bugs were fixed, and 33 were accepted for further review. You can see the full bug fix list at the blog post.

  • Facebook Introduces Developer Alerts For Apps

    Any Facebook developer will tell you that that platform moves pretty quickly. The team at Facebook is constantly improving and iterating the platform, and that may introduce some breaking changes into apps. Developers need to keep on top of these changes, but it’s not exactly convenient in the current set up.

    Facebook has heard the plight of the developer, and has decided to bring the updates to them. The social network calls it Developer Alerts, and it intends to inform developers when something goes wrong with their app, or when action is required over a breaking change.

    So what kind of information can developers expect to receive in these alerts. Facebook lays out in a blog post:

    Breaking changes. If your app is using functionality that we’re changing or removing, you will be sent an alert at least 90 days before the change goes into effect. As a courtesy, we’ll also send reminders at 60, 30 and 0 days. Once you’ve enabled the respective migration, we will no longer send you alerts.

    App status changes. If you have submitted Open Graph actions or created an app detail page for App Center, we will use Developer Alerts to notify you when the status of your submission changes. For example, we will send an alert when your Open Graph actions are approved.

    Policy violations and enforcement. If your app doesn’t adhere to our Platform Policies you will be notified through these alerts. For example, if your app does not list a privacy policy, you will receive an alert telling you to add one before your app is forced into sandbox mode.

    You can expect Developer Alerts to look a little something like this:

    Facebook Introduces Developer Alerts For Apps

    As you can see, the Developer Alerts are very clear on what actions developers should take with their apps. Facebook is also nice enough to include links when action is required on the part of the developer. To prevent confusion on apps with more than one developer, Facebook will also send out notifications to all team members when an issue is resolved.

    On a final note, Developer Alerts will begin rolling out in some apps today, and continue to roll out to all apps over the coming weeks. With that being said, Facebook will not be spamming developers with notifications. Developers would be wise to keep on top of changes themselves so that they don’t have to receive an alert telling them something is wrong.

  • Facebook Graph API Now Supports In-Game Groups

    The past week has been relatively slow in the world of Facebook development. When that happens, there’s a good chance that the weekly Operation Developer Love update will be bursting at the seams with new features and updates. Facebook didn’t disappoint as this week’s update is full of new features that developers will want to start trying out.

    The Graph API takes on another function this week as Facebook introduces groups for games and apps. Developers can use the Graph API to build up groups around their games. Much like regular Facebook groups or the more traditional clan in online gaming, game developers can invite strangers to join together in a group to work towards a common goal. It could potentially solve one of the major problems with social games – not having enough friends all playing the same game to unlock higher tier rewards.

    Like most new additions, Facebook is rolling groups out as a beta to all apps and games in App Center. More work will be put into it over time, but developers will want to help Facebook work out the kinks so both parties can provide the best experience possible to end users. Interested developers can get started now by reading the documentation.

    Before you get into Open Graph groups, developers first have to prove to Facebook that it can handle the responsibility of Open Graph. Developers can now upload screenshots of their Open Graph usage during the Open Graph Action submission process. This will help Facebook expedite the submission process by being able to see that new developers understand the Guidelines and responsibilities that come with Open Graph development.

    Fans of Facebook’s JavaScript SDK are in for a treat this week as there is now a debug version of the SDK now available. Facebook says that it’s loaded un-minified and contains stricter type checking. It will hopefully provide more accurate data on errors when developers are debugging their apps. You can see more here.

    Facebook’s Platform Policy page has been updated to address use of its social plugins. Developers who use Facebook’s own social plugins “must not sell or purchase placement or participate in any like exchange program.” You can read more.

    The Facebook for WordPress Plugin has been updated with improved stability, individual settings pages, custom poste type support, and custom post status support. Version 1.1 of the WordPress plugin requires WordPress 3.3 or newer. You can read more here.

    Facebook also announced today that all North American users are now being moved to the HTTPS protocol. The rest of the world will be following shortly. The move to HTTPS will make the site more secure for everybody.

    As always, Facebook rounds out its post with the weekly bug report. The social network reports that 236 bugs were reported this week, and 11 bugs were fixed. Thirty-eight bugs were accepted for further review. You can check out the full bug fix list at the blog post.

  • Facebook Details Breaking Changes For February

    Facebook’s weekly Operation Developer Love is a great way to keep on top of Facebook development. There’s at least a few new important updates or enhancements each week, but there’s the odd week where nothing happens. Good thing it’s the beginning of the month, and therefore the next list of breaking changes is revealed.

    Facebook announced today that the November 2012 breaking changes have now gone live. Some of the changes include the retirement of sending payment reports to developers via email, and new required permissions. You can read up on it here.

    Let’s not dwell on the past, and instead look towards the future. A future that will not go into effect until February 6, 2013. On this date, Facebook will be implementing a number of breaking changes that developers need to be aware of.

    The first big change is that Facebook will no longer “show Custom Open Graph actions that were published simply by a user consuming content.” The move follows a change to the Open Graph API in October that blocks developers from automatically pushing custom Open Graph stories as users consumer content.

    Smaller changes will go under the usual migration settings where developers can turn on or off the following features:

    Authenticated referrals going away
    We will remove the Authenticated Referrals feature. You should instead use the Auth Dialog.

    Create_event permission required to remove attendees from event
    We will require the create_event permission in order to remove attendees from an event a user admins.

    Minor change to admin.getAppProperties call
    When making an admin.getAppProperties call, we will now return an empty Android Key Hash field as [] instead of [“”].

    Canonical URLs used when fetching Open Graph objects
    We will start using canonical URLs (e.g. the URL set in an og:url tag, 301/302 redirects, etc.) when fetching objects.

    Offset no longer allowed when searching posts
    We will no longer allow the offset parameter to be used when searching stream posts. Please use since and until to do paging instead.

    Curly bracket syntax for mentioning users in notifications going away
    We will no longer allow the curly bracket syntax ({USER_ID}) for mentioning users in notifications. Developers should instead use the new syntax (@[USER_ID]).

    Removing ability to post to friends walls via Graph API
    We will remove the ability to post to a user’s friends’ walls via the Graph API. Specifically, posts against [user_id]/feed where [user_id] is different from the session user, or stream.publish calls where the target_id user is different from the session user, will fail. If you want to allow people to post to their friends’ timelines, invoke the feed dialog. Stories that include friends via user mentions tagging or action tagging will show up on the friend’s timeline (assuming the friend approves the tag).

    Once again, the above changes will not go into effect until February 6. Developers have until then to make their peace and move their apps to using the new systems in place.

    As for the bug report, Facebook says that 229 bugs were reported, and 33 bugs were fixed. Twenty-nine bugs were also accepted for further review. You can check out the full bug report at the blog post.

  • Open Graph Is Still Being Awesome For Apps

    Open Graph is arguably Facebook’s most important asset. The social network points to data that shows apps using Open Graph see a huge increase in monthly active users and referrals. In its latest data breakdown, Facebook shows that music on Facebook is growing exponentially thanks to Open Graph.

    On the developer blog, Facebook said that 62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times since the launch of Open Graph. To put it into perspective, Facebook says that users have listened to almost 210,000 years of music so far.

    The key to all of this success lies in Open Graph, among other specific sharing types for music. Facebook details some music apps that have found success thanks to Open Graph integration. For instance, 8tracks, a social Internet radio service, generates four million Open Graph shares every week, which it turn generates 65 million story impressions.

    It’s important to note that all the services that Facebook points to are none of the big name Internet streaming or radio services. These are all less-known apps that are making a splash in the music streaming industry thanks to Open Graph.

    That’s not to say that the big guys aren’t using it to their advantage either. Facebook notes that Deezer, a French music streaming site, has seen its user base triple since the beginning of the year. In hard numbers, that’s 50,000 new users being added per day.

    So what can a new app do to get these kind of numbers? Facebook says that deep integration with Open Graph and its numerous services are key. For starters, the music app should present a Facebook login button front and center. Beyond that, highlight friend activity so that users will be inclined to stay and share their taste in music.

    Finally, all music apps should enable explicit sharing. This allows users to share every facet of your app with the world. Some apps may just share what songs a user is currently listening to. The truly successful apps will let users share playlists, wish lists and other information from the app for their friends to engage.

    Music has obviously benefitted from integrating with Open Graph, but just about any app will see some increase in usage thanks to Facebook’s sharing APIs. For more information on how to implement it, check out Facebook’s excellent guidelines and tutorial.

  • Use Your Facebook Data to Smear Yourself with a Negative Political Ad (It’s Fun, I Promise)

    Use Your Facebook Data to Smear Yourself with a Negative Political Ad (It’s Fun, I Promise)

    There’s a new project out from PBS NewsHour that allows anyone to create political ads for themselves with Facebook data. It’s called Ad Libs, and it’s a fun and informative way to show voters exactly how cookie cutter political ads really are.

    “Do you know how political campaign ads work? How they’re built? What they’re meant to tell you? Most political ads follow a rigid set of guidelines and fall into one of a few categories. We’ve put together a few samples for you to customize with your information and imagination. It’s fun, it’s fast, and you’ll never watch campaign ads the same way again!” says PBS.

    The Ad Lib ad maker allows you to make character ads (pro) and attack ads (negative). Within the attack ads, you can either use the “attack character” or “attack credentials” template.

    Making your own attack ad (against yourself) is easy. Once you log in via Facebook, a boilerplate attack ad begins to play. The video stops at key moments to allow you to insert images and quotes from your Facebook profile.

    First, you’ll choose an unflattering picture. The Ad Libs ad maker puts it in black and white, because we all know that black and white means bad when it comes to political ads. Next, you’ll be asked to choose an “out of context newspaper quote,” which means one of your statuses. You’re then asked to chose even more out-of-context quotes based on your statuses.

    You can replay your video once it’s made, or share it to Facebook. In the end, you’ll have a hilarious attack ad against yourself that looks something like this:

    Of course, you can make a positive ad – but where’s the fun in that?

    [via Gizmodo]

  • Facebook Details The Latest Open Graph Changes

    It was announced yesterday that Facebook would be enacting a number of changes in Open Graph. It would force developers to increase the quality of their apps while increasing user satisfaction across the platform. Facebook now has more details on those changes.

    During the weekly Operation Developer Love update, Facebook says that developers will have to watch out for three major changes to Open Graph API. The first is the removal of the Authenticated Referrals feature. Instead, developers must implement the Auth Dialog. They will also be removing the ability to post to a user’s friends’ wall via the Graph API, but developers can still use the feed dialog. Lastly, custom Open Graph actions are no longer allowed in apps that automatically push stories as users consume content. Developers must now use built-in actions for such functionality.

    Developers may also be aware that Facebook has enabled a change that causes the picture Graph API to return a dictionary. They found that the change caught some developers off guard even when they had 90 days to prepare. In response, Facebook has extended the migration period to February 6 of next year. Interested developers can check out the Developer Roadmap for more information.

    The last update this week is a short reminder that Facebook will start removing internal features from the JavaScript SDK interface. Developers can check the console to see if any internal features are currently being used.

    As always, Facebook has been squashing bugs left and right. There were 182 bugs reported this week with 28 being fixed and 17 being accepted for further review. The full list of fixes is available at the blog post.

  • Facebook Hopes To Make Apps Better By Making Open Graph Stricter

    One of Facebook’s main strategies moving forward is to increase the number of apps with Facebook integration. This will increase the number of users visiting Facebook, and in turn increase their own advertising potential. That’s why Facebook has been pushing Open Graph, App Center and other developer tools to make sure those apps are the best they can be. The social network has determined that it’s still not good enough, and is now rolling out some more changes that developers will need to be aware of.

    First things first, Facebook is changing up how open graph stories display on a user’s feed. Their research indicates that stories with an image and location are among the most engaging. The apps that provide both will be given priority over other apps. Developers may not like that change, Facebook assures stories with both an image and location generate 70 percent more clicks with some stories even gaining 50 times more likes.

    Non-open graph stories, such as those published with stream.publish, will be presented in the old way. Facebook has a comparison shot of the same story in both ways to show the difference.

    Facebook Open Graph Apps

    The new format does look better once you get past the creep factor of having Facebook display a user’s precise location via Bing Maps. Of course, users have the final say on how much information apps can display with their apps, and that will presumably stay the same. For developers, you can start taking advantage of these new display options right now. Check out the documentation for more details.

    The other major change is concerned with the use of custom actions. In the past, these allowed apps to automatically publish stories to a user’s feed. Apps must now use Facebook approved built-in actions with their apps. This is to cut down on the instances where custom actions would “surprise and confuse people.” These built-in actions will still publish stories to a user’s feed automatically, but they will be done in a way that helps “set user expectations.”

    What about those developers who can’t find a built-in action that’s right for them? Facebook says that you should just “build a different experience that helps people share meaningful stories with friends.” In essence, you should innovate if Facebook’s own system fails you.

    Facebook is also deprecating two features that have resulted in high negative user feedback. The first is authenticated referrals which only serve to annoy users by asking for permissions with little context. Developers must move to using the standard Auth Dialog system.

    Secondly, Facebook is removing the Post to Friend’s Wall option in the API. Too many users were responding to friend’s posting apps on their wall by either clicking “hide” or “mark as spam.” Developers who still want to allow users to spam friends can invoke the feed dialog.

    Developers have 90 days to fix the aforementioned issues in their apps. After that, the app will be removed from Facebook until the proper fixes are applied to the app. At that point, developers can resubmit their app for approval.

    To help developers avoid such a fate, Facebook has updated their Open Graph guidelines page with all new info on quality expectations and tips on how to provide quality experiences to users.

  • Facebook Skips On Hosting The F8 Conference This Year

    An tech company is only as strong as the developers who make apps for their services. That’s why Google, Apple and the rest court developers every year with a big show that touches upon the latest in developing for iOS, Android and the like. Facebook has joined in with this tradition over the past few years with their F8 conference. Unfortunately, it will be MIA this year.

    Facebook told reporters yesterday that their seemingly annual F8 conference would not be happening this year. The reason being that Facebook hasn’t shipped a major new product this year. In fact, the company is still pushing Open Graph, which was introduced at last year’s F8 conference.

    For their part, Facebook is still pushing development on the Facebook platform, but in other ways. A conference doesn’t let Zuckerberg and crew get intimate with developers. That may be why the company vouched for putting more emphasis on World Hack 2012 with more locations around the world. In fact, the Facebook crew is hosting a Hackathon in Barcelona today.

    Facebook will hold other F8 conferences in the future. The developers who love gathering together and talking about the latest movements in the Facebook scene need not worry. It’s just that Facebook needs something on par or greater than Open Graph to make such an extravagant event worth the cost. The company does have to answer to investors now, and a conference without any major announcements could only hurt their market growth.

    As for now, Facebook is going to keep focusing on mobile growth. They have the desktop development market squared away, but the mobile market is still an untamed frontier ripe for the taking. Facebook may be the big name in town, but a small start up could easily usurp them. The next F8 conference will undoubtedly address this potential problem.

    [h/t: All Things D]