Jesse's Social Networking Site

What's Where...

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:34:00 +0000

As we approach the magic moment of Facebook users being able to experiment with the new interface, here's a recap of where things are with the book examples:

1. JF Example (the code from the end of the book in Chapter 15--the complete example), is running with old libraries and code that matches the book. So far it seems to be OK--the libraries on the Facebook end work as promised in letting old apps run. For production, the desire is obviously to move to the new interface, but to follow the book, we're keeping the code the same. If you find an issue, please email me.

2. ChamplainArtsQA (apps.facebook.com/developmentqa) temporarily points to the experimental version of Chapter 15 that you can download. The only two changes since that download was created was the removal of the two require_add lines of code. This app is running with the new UI libraries. Again, send email with an issues. (The only change to the libraries is commenting out the inclusion of jsonwrapper--our server is running PHP 5.2.6 which includes it.)

Jesse

Very Important New Facebook App Procedure

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:31:00 +0000

As Facebook moves to the launch of the revised interface, the application adding/authorizing procedure is becoming more refined. New code is due to roll out today (Monday, 7/21).

As we knew, users will no longer add applications. Now, they will authorize applications to access their user data. The former post-add URL on the app setup page is now the post-authorization URL and behaves in the same way so you can use the callback at that URL to store allowable information.

Users can opt out of sharing their data either globally in their profile (for all apps) or by not authorizing an individual application.

The change is a simplification for the user; for apps it's pretty much the same except that the once ubiquitous require_add calls need to be removed. (This is discussed in the book because it's been known for a long time--require_login is the preferred code.)

The require_add call will remain because in the case of Facebook Pages (not users), the Page (via its administrators) will be able to add apps.

New Facebook Metrics Herald a New Era

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:42:00 +0000

New metrics were announced on June 17, and were provided in the new PHP library rolled out on June 25. These metrics provide 7- and 30-day metrics to use in evaluating an app.

A key part of the June 17 announcement is this paragraph: "These two metrics [7- and 30-day metrics] are very important for many applications, as not every good application has its users interacting with them on a daily basis. Rather, they can be just as engaging when a user interacts with them regularly every few days or even a few times a month. For example, applications with many users that highlight rich content like books or movies might not see as much relative activity on a daily basis as applications with higher daily usage, but their overall metrics increase when the activity window is extended over longer periods of time."

With the initial opening of Facebook platform, a land rush was on for daily users. Despite that hoopla, some of us pointed out that there was value--often tremendous value--in small-scale apps. While there's room for both big and small apps, I take the paragraph quoted here as a positive sign of maturation in the world of Facebook apps. There has always been some concern that this all might be a fad, but the growing number of apps with rich content and consistent but periodic use suggests that concern is less relevant than it might have been a year ago.

Important Change to Facebook Feed Stories

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 12:32:00 +0000

Facebook now allows the HTML script tag in story templates. This has two important consequence. FIrst, you can include JavaScript in story templates. This significantly increases the functionality. The second change is that the delimiters for tokens in stories change from { and } to {* and *} to avoid confusion with JavaScript delimiters. Existing templates still work, but new ones require the new token syntax (and can take advantage of the HTML script tag).

More info here.

Open Source Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:09:00 +0000

A year after opening the platform to developers, Facebook is opening much of the Facebook Platform code as well as the implementations of many methods and tags. The downloadable code is here.

Require-Login/Require-Add

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Sat, 31 May 2008 12:30:00 +0000

Facebook is changing the recommended and default behaviors for require_login and require_add.

In part, this is because so many people are flummoxed when they try a new app for the first time and have to decide whether or not to add it before they have a chance to find out what it is.

In the book's example, we use require_login by default at the beginning (which is now the Facebook policy). This allows users to browse events and see their friends' events. We then use require_add to bottleneck the requests to update our database.

This will change with the new structure. Because we have used require_login wherever possible to improve our user experience, we only will need to adjust the require_add calls which we have already used sparingly. Specific features that require_add now will be moved as follows (remember, this is not final):

. Put a box in my profile: now an FBML button so the process is one step (you want a box? click here--not add the app or change the settings....THEN click here)

. Put a link in left nav. Left nav is gone, replaced by the Applications menu. When you're in an app's canvas page, you'll have a new bookmark feature which will add it to the Applications menu. You can rearrange the Applications menu from Edit My Applications.

. Publish stories in my News Feed. Enabled by default; disable in Edit My Applications. Stories of more than one line require user approval to send.

. Email notifications to users. Disabled by default. To enable it, users will need to click an interface element on your canvas page. This is not controlled by Edit My Applications.

. Add profile actions links. Deprecated: there are none in the new interface.

In general, these simplify the user experience and close some areas that allowed over-enthusiastic app developers to annoy users with excess email and the like. In a related area, forced invites are now a violation of the TOS unless they are required for functionality (an app requires a user to have a friend using the app so that they can interact) or the reason for the forced invite is made clear.

News on the New Facebook Feed

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:20:00 +0000

Here is the new info on the Feed. We'll be updating one of the examples to use it this week. More news as it happens...

Facebook Beta

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:39:00 +0000

Facebook is now planning to update the beta site each Monday. Developers (i.e., anyone who has added the Facebook Developer app) can access it to check out their code. We're checking the book examples to make certain that nothing breaks.

Sandbox for New Facebook Pages, Revised Chapter 15 App

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:29:00 +0000

Facebook has launched a sandbox for developers to test out the new profile pages. You need to be a Facebook developer to use it (see Chapter 12, page 192, "Get Started As a Facebook Developer).

There are more changes to come in the next few days, but we're getting ready. The code for Chapter 15 (the final version of the book's app) has been on the downloads page since the book was published. A revised version was posted six weeks ago: it uses the PHP5 libraries (rather than PHP4). In addition, on the back end, we've switched to MySQL 5. There are no changes to the code except for pointing to different libraries (and those pointers change depending on which environment you're in and where your files are located).

The first step of the change to the new profile pages is another app you can play with. You can find it at apps.facebook.com/developmentqa. At the moment, it is EXACTLY the source code of the PHP 5 version of Chapter 15, and it works without changes on the beta version of the new profile pages in the sandbox.

As the new profile page APIs are incorporated into the sandbox, I'll be adding their functionality to the app and will make the source code available for downloading in addition to the regular download files. The timing of this is totally dependent on the Facebook timing. My guess is that we'll wind up with updates no more than once a week for the Chapter 15 example. Details of the updates and the source code will be on http://www.jesses-social-networking-site.com/. If you subscribe to the Atom feed at the bottom of the page, you'll get the updates in your news reader, browser, or email program as soon as they're posted. Postings from that blog also show up as notes on the book's Facebook page.

If you want to follow along with the example, my suggestion is to download the Chapter 15 (revised) files from the downloads page. Then you can just add in the changes as they come along.

Washington Post: Fledgling Rebellion on Facebook Is Struck Down by Force in Egypt

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Sun, 18 May 2008 14:42:00 +0000

When I started writing about Facebook, I had to convince people that it wasn't just something kids used. I don't have to do much convincing any more.

Although there are many people who bemoan the changes in Facebook (PARENTS are joining!), we're seeing it and other social networks being used in new ways--not always successfully as the Washington Post article about Egypt shows.

So many substantive groups and apps on Facebook are emerging that I'm not certain we can even see where it will end. Are the days of "what vegetable are you?" over? And maybe that's a good thing. However, the socializing and, yes, just plain fun on Facebook are still there.

And on a personal note (this is a blog, after all), it's just two weeks we think until the Great Day in the North Country (that would be the Adirondacks and Vermont). Unicel, the GSM service owned by Verizon is due to swap customers here with some CDMA customers in Oklahoma. Workers in the local Unicel store confirm that as of June 2 they will be an AT&T store. And we know what that means...iPhone. Those of us with iPhones don't use them much in this region because we dread spending too much time off network and losing our accounts (the stories aren't pleasant). With AT&T, that fear will presumably disappear, and people like me can ditch our two-cell-phone lives. (Anyone want to buy a used Sprint Treo 650?)

Which matters for Facebook because the mobile interface on my account is turned off due to the Sprint pricing structure. Assuming the June 2 date is valid, the mobile interface will be turned on.

Now, I only have to worry about iPhone roaming when traveling to one foreign country, not two. (Although we hear iPhone comes to Canada this summer. And, yes, I know that technically Vermont is not a foreign country, but...)

CNET: Facebook Developer "Hype Machine" Slowing Down

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:39:00 +0000

The headline may perhaps be a bit too..."headliney." The mad rush to create the next great mass-market Facebook app seems over. Apps of substance are chugging along quite nicely, thank you. I haven't been asked what vegetable I am for quite some time now, but friends old and new are doing interesting things on Facebook. (I'm sure glad the book focused on apps of substance, if you'll forgive the plug.)

With the long-anticipated disappearance of Facebook networks (in favor of groups), and the new openings for social networking by Facebook, Google, and MySpace, we're moving forward. By keeping itself somewhat separate but allowing increasing incoming and outgoing access, Facebook exercises a degree of control over its look-and-feel that is reminiscent of...well, Apple. It's a difficult task to pull off, but when done right, it creates very strong customer bonds.

We'll see what the next chapter brings....

New Facebook Profile Pages

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:24:00 +0000

Facebook is releasing more info about the new Profile pages. (See Integration Guide to the New Facebook Profile.)

They're opening a beta site "later this month" [May]. Our plan is as soon as that's up to post parallel versions as necessary of the book's code (as well as the extra goodies).

Stay tuned (and if you haven't signed up for the Downloads Updates mailing list, you can do so here.

We'll continue with brief notices to fans of the book's page as well as this blog, but the bulk of the code details will be in the Downloads Updates mailing list.

Jesse

Status: Looking for Work on Facebook (NY Times)

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:34:00 +0000

Yesterday it was the AdWeek article about using Facebook for independent adoptions. Today it's The New York Times weighing in with an article about using Facebook and other social networking sites for business networking.

It's a totally unrepresentative sample, but in the last month I've gotten a number of emails from people interested in a variety of Facebook projects that are like those mentioned in The Times and in AdWeek. Someone wanted to use the main example in the book as a model for communicating with international students at a university; there was another email from someone interested in doing a contractor recommendation app.

I realize that one of the gaps in Facebook is a way of describing these project. "Not games" is descriptive in a negative way. One suggestion is "substance-based apps" but that sounds a bit too scientific to me (and also lends itself to sarcastic remarks). Any suggestions are more than welcome.

Adoption and Facebook: from the Adweek Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:44:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I received an email that started this way: "Wanted to tell you about our experiences with adoption and Facebook. I was reading your book and got to the chapter about advertising on facebook. I decided that this could be an excellent medium to reach a specific community of users with an add for adoption, so I gave it try."

Now there's a follow-up in the form of an article on the AdWeek Blog.

Facebook Chat

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:57:00 +0000

Facebook has been working on chat for some time, and it now appears to have rolled out to the world.

Two features are worth noting. FIrst of all, it's implemented at the bottom of Facebook windows in the border (which is now expanded). This happens seamlessly to app developers because apps live within the Facebook frame and Facebook can make changes like this without impacting (well-behaved) applications. Of course, there's a limit to what you can do with the frame, because there's never enough real estate on a computer display, but a small and elegant interface like this fits in beautifully.

Second, Facebook chat builds on your Facebook friends. The whole thing is a solid structure of real people and relationships. The more I work on Facebook, the more I think that the real people/real names aspect of it is the key issue.

New Facebook Example Files

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:04:00 +0000

There's a new set of example files for the book's main example (Chapter 15). These files use the April 9, 2008 version of the Facebook client, and they also use PHP 5 (not PHP 4)--although we didn't find any operational differences, so this is just a housecleaning for going forward.

There is one Facebook API change that requires a line of code to be changed ($facebook->api_client->feed_publishTemplatizedAction called from myCAEs.php), and it's documented.

The major change is a slight restructuring in lib.php of get_from_database_and_render. It's been split into two (the pagination code is now in its own function), and instead of a plethora of parameters, there's now an associative array. The step-by-step process of building the app in the book makes it easier to follow, but, as mentioned at the end of the book, once you've been through the process, you can use a more sophisticated structure, which is what this is. (It also makes the code somewhat more reusable).

When you download the files, please take a moment to join the Downloads List. We don't send out much by way of mail, but it's important that we be able to contact you with updates. Particularly now that we're waiting for some revisions from Facebook on Profile pages, we want to be able to let you know as soon as we have revised files.

Note that the sample app at http://apps.facebook.com/jfexample is now running against these revised files. Also, the intention is to place new versions like this next to the old version so you can choose which one to use.

Visit the book's Facebook Page for more info.

New Facebook Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:29:00 +0000

What are people building by way of Facebook apps? Recent postings about new apps and questions about programming them support the view in the book that many apps are small and focused. An app to help clients of a health club keep track of their fitness regimen. Low-gas-prices in a given metro area.

This is not to deny that there aren't still many Facebook blockbuster apps out there waiting to be written, but the focus of the social graph on small-scale projects remains a compelling argument for building Facebook apps.

On another front, a friend reported a new wrinkle in the ongoing conversation about whether social networking sites and the Internet in general are decreasing our social skills and interactions. So many Facebook apps really don't show their best features unless you have friends using the same app. The friend (nameless by request) said that getting the most out of Facebook apps means keeping up with friends. Not the pig-in-a-poke "friends" you sometimes encounter, but those friends from school or old neighborhoods or whatever that you've lost track of. I know this is the party line, but it does seem to tip the balance towards keeping up with friends.

Of course, now, I have to face the fact that a disturbing number of people on Facebook remember H.M.S. Pinafore from Gunston Junior High School. I wonder if playing SIr Joseph influenced me in later life? (And no, please do not respond to this rhetorical question.)

Looking Forward to April

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:08:00 +0000

Facebook will be releasing their new Profile Pages in April. First indications are that the existing code in How to Do Everything: Facebook Applications will work without modification (that's because we use the Facebook object which helps insulate us from API changes). Soon after the new APIs are released, we'll be releasing a modification of the book's code. It's tested now with PHP5 (instead of PHP4) and with a restructuring and simplification of lib.php. The restructuring makes the code more reusable for other projects.

Check back or join the mailing list for updates.

Facebook Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:53:00 +0000

Facebook is in the process of improving privacy settings and options and, more significantly, redesigning Profile pages for users.

From the app developer's point of view, these settings add more features and options without breaking anything. As soon as the new Profile pages are released, there will be an update here (and on the book's Facebook Page) summarizing all of the changes.

Also, now that PHP4 is officially gone, the example code is going to be ported to PHP5. It looks as if there are no significant changes, but we're testing everything just to be certain. Using the Facebook objects instead of the API tends to insulate you from changes.

Dupre's Facebook and MySpace Pages

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:02:00 +0000

CNN has a good roundup here of the fallout in the social networking world of one of the participants.

Is there a way to manage sudden attention so that you embrace the positive and control the negative? Not in the social networking world (and, most of the time, not in the real world). Publicity is, and always has been, a Faustian bargain.

The Future of Facebook Apps?

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:45:00 +0000

In "Facebook Is Extending Its Network to Blood Donations" from the New York Times, Peter S. Goodman writes about the Facebook-based Takes All Types that notifies potential blood donors when their blood type is needed in their area.

Two points stand out. First, this is one of an emerging breed of Facebook apps that combines the enormous global user base of Facebook with local information. From those millions and millions, you often wind up with significant small numbers in a constrained area. (See the book's example ChamplainArts as well as the extra download Plattsburgh Picks.)

The second point is a quote from Ben Bergman, one of the founders of Takes All Types: "“The whole thing was done in about three months, for about $500."

Facebook apps are often low-cost ways to promote a product or cause or even to solve a problem (blood shortages). This has a lot of ramifications for developers--such as the fact that big bucks aren't necessarily part and parcel of Facebook development. What it means is that developing Facebook apps is just one more tool in the arsenal of Web developers and marketers. (Dare I mention that this is one of the ideas behind How to Do Everything: Facebook Apps? Get in, analyze what you can do, do it, and get out.)

WP Article: Making Your Life an Open Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:20:00 +0000

Wonderful article by Lori Aratani of the Washington Post about what happens when kids get friend requests...from their parents.

If you think about it, there's another little bump in the road coming up ahead. Some of the first Facebook users who were in college in 2004 surely are starting families. How will they feel when their offspring start using Facebook? There's a minimum age limit of 13, so they have a few years to think about it. Will it be a rite of passage with Mom and Dad teaching the little tyke how to log on to Facebook? Or will it come as a surprise when the friend request from the tyke arrives in the parental inbox with no prior warning?

Developer Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:51:00 +0000

This site is an excellent collection of statistics on Facebook applications. The top 4 apps in terms of active users (Top Friends, FunWall, Super Wall and Bumper Sticker) have 1.2 to 2.2 active users. By the time you're down to #50 (Scramble), it's 106,000 users.

These numbers are still big, but sometimes the numbers for the most popular apps overshadow the vast number of really interesting apps with devoted audiences.

Facebook may be a mass market phenomenon, but it's also a mass of nice markets with a remarkably low barrier to entry.

Social Networking Developer Economics

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:30:00 +0000

The development environment for apps in the social networking world has a lot of pieces of different technologies, but, overall, the process is not complicated. The biggest issues are what the app does, not how it does it. And that is borne out by postings on the Facebook want ads for develoopers, as in "We are looking to build and launch a simple application over the weekend..." (link above). This is far from an unusual posting.

NYT Editorial on Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:55:00 +0000

Titled One Friend Facebook Hasn't Made Yet: Privacy Rights, this editorial from 2/18 makes a number of absolutely legitimate points, but in two areas, The Times got it wrong.

First to the right. Recently it became apparent that deleting a Facebook account didn't delete all traces of it. In two areas, information remained. One, over which Facebook has no control, is the result of Google (and other searches) that find the public version of a Facebook user's profile. It shouldn't be news to anyone by now that Google caches images of the Web pages that it searches. Long after the Web page has disappeared, you can still often view an image of what it looked like. (The safest way of minimizing this situation appears to be not to remove Web pages you don't want to be visible but rather to revise them--even to a blank page, so that Google will cache a new image.) Facebook users can control if their public profile can be shown in search engines, but it's an opt-out feature. The Times suggests more opt-in features, and that's not unreasonable.

Although not mentioned in The Times editorial, reports seem to indicate some loose ends of user information floating around Facebook after account deletion. My guess is that it may be records in the join table that matches two users as friends. Someone may have assumed that if an account is closed, nothing will be shown for a now-deleted account of a friend, but we know now (see Iran-Contra, the Nixon Tape Gap, the millions of possibly missing White House email messages) that these little traces can often be put back together again.

On these points, The Times is right.

On the bigger point, The Times quotes Erving Goffman on the concept of "identity management," and suggests that online sites such as MySpace and Facebook should "give users as much control over their identities online as they have offline." Good idea. Excellent idea. But then, The Times continues: "Users should be asked if they want information to be viewable by others, and by whom: Their friends? Everyone in the world? Privacy settings, which allow for this kind of screening, should be prominent, clear and easily managed."

Sorry Times, that's not how it works in the offline world. We think we have a lot more control than we do. The hunky TV star who made the cover of a supermarket tabloid on a security camera in a porn store and, on the inside, a copy of his itemized receipt for what would appear to be the ingredients of a gay adventure made an assumption of privacy that didn't exist. Sure, that's a TV star, but local media (not to mention) blogs exist for The Rest of Us. Unless you hide in a cave, you will present yourself to the public in ways that you think you can control.

Yes, providing opt-in privacy settings is a great idea. Many Web sites are loathe to do so, because it drastically cuts down on the amount of information that they can publish. But when a social networking site lets users control their visibility, the same social graph that enables so many interactions can come into play. If my friend X says she has come up with some privacy settings that make sense to her, I may adopt them for myself. The Social Web is largely about control--and that control does live with users to a greater extent than ever before.

But control of one's public image--online or off--is a tough thing to pull off. To a greater or lesser extent, we are all Paris Hilton.