Facebook is gaining massive attention from the first day it was announce to be publicly accessible, not just a group of students from Harvard, as how it was initially intended for. From that day onwards, facebook redefines a new level of online social connect. While you may think it is just a plain Friendster or Myspace, facebook extend further than just messages, comments and online status. What’s is so great nowadays about facebook is that it is all easy to be understood and used by many, but also capable of doing more than that underneath. A set of features mostly intended to a group of people looking on how to monetize its platform. By monetized I mean, not making money completely out of it, like advertising or selling your own apps. But making facebook social graph, as a big footprint for a large distribution of your products and at the same time, creating a massive advertising audience that are already there, just waiting.
For a developer, facebook introduce many design patterns that will make you think twice on how to develop your applications up to that level of facebook in terms of users management and controls. You may have heard of facebook wall, post, pokes, messages, comments, reviews, application, notes and pictures to name a few of thing that you can already do within the boundary of facebook.com. But how many of us aware about facebook developer, facebook platform, facebook connect or facebook beacon. These are just a few example of things that you can do on facebook that harness the power of social graph.
Facebook Beacon
Facebook Beacon is a way for you to bring actions you take online into Facebook. Beacon works by allowing affiliate websites to send stories about actions you take to Facebook. – www.facebook.com
Facebook Beacon request to post news on a users profile. - www.facebook.com
Like a beacon, you can use this facebook beacon to announce the existence of your company or your product. Just imagine how many users on facebook can actually see what your users are doing from inside facebook. For example, you own a shopping cart, and you have a facebook user on your site buying something. With a facebook beacon, when that user bought something from your online store, a beacon is submitted to facebook and posted on that user wall. His friends will be able to see this actions and eventually will know about your shopping cart too. His friends may also join in and come to your shopping cart and again, another beacon is sent to facebook and seen by the rest of his friends. Viral as I will put this. A simple thing, but very effective. Without facebook beacon, the only way you can hope that your cart buyers are propagating the existance of your cart is via the “Tell a friend” button, but who wants to fill in yet another form, right.
Facebook Connect
Log in to a website with your facebook logins, get rids of the sign up process. - www.facebook.com
Remember the last time you sign up on a website, create new account or register a login name just to gain access to one thing and forget about it later. Do you remember how many accounts your have registered on the net. Truth is, we are leaving our personal details here and there averywhere on the internet. As for a web developer, to have a user register on your website is one of the first selling point that you have succeeded. The buying thing is later. Indirectly, getting them to signup is like getting them to buy your product. People get tired of filling up forms, username, password, birth date and so on. Often, users will hinder your website just because you asked “Please sign up to proceed”. Facebook Connect get rid of this requirements buy leveraging a platform of users database and make it available to the developer. In other words, facebook Connect give you the ability to get your prospective users to log in to your website with their facebook account and get rid of the signup page. Talking about simplicity.
Facebook Connect is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to “connect” their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site. This will now enable third party websites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook – similar to features available to third party applications today on Facebook. – www.facebook.com
In addition, interactions of these facebook users on your website can be sent back to their profile on facebook, creating an easy advertising campaign for you. You can connect your website with facebook and create a mutual interactions between both. The brightside is, a lot of people will get aware of your comapny presence.
That’s all for today. Next post, I will be talking more on facebook Developer and Facebook Platform.
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