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Facebook Integration Benefits

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Summary

Entire digital world knows “Facebook” is best social product ever existed.  It has very huge user base and still growing on the space.  I’m going to talk about “Facebook Integration Benefits” for Websites and Apps on Facebook.

Facebook Platform enables companies/business websites become more social then ever.  Facebook plugin helps to drive user engagement. For example: Registration Plugin simplify or eliminate  user registration and sign-in process.  Important part of Facebook is advantage of Graph API; the full social graph of user, allowing business to create a truly deep personal experience for their users.

Facebook for Websites

Social Plugins:

  • Like Button – This is most important social plugin, which enables users to share your page with their friends with one click
  • Activity Feed [Recent Activity] – to show users a stream of the recent likes and comments from their friends on your site
  • Recommendations Box – To show personalized page recommendations to your users based on the likes and comments across your entire site
  • Comments Box – It enables user commenting on your site. Features include moderation tools and distribution.   Uses social signals to surface the highest quality comments for each user.
    • Social Relevance: Comments are ordered to show users the most relevant comments from friends, friends of friends, and the most liked or active discussion threads, while comments marked as spam are hidden from view
    • Distribution: Comments are easily shared with friends or with people who like your Page on Facebook. If a user leaves the “Post to Facebook” box checked when she posts a comment, a story appears on her friends News Feed indicating that she’s made a comment on your website, which will also link back to your site.
  • Registration – The Registration plugin allows users to easily sign up for your website with their Facebook account. The plugin is a simple iframe that you can drop on your website page.  When user logged into Facebook, users see a form that is pre-filled with their Facebook information where appropriate
  • Live Stream – It share activity and comments in real time.  Live Stream works best when websites are running a real-time event, like live streaming video for concerts, speeches, or webcasts, live Web chats, webinars, massively multiplayer games
  • Facepile – Displays the Facebook profile pictures of users who have connected with your website page via a global or custom action, or can also be configured to display users that have signed up for your website
  • Like Box – enables Facebook Page owners to attract and gain Likes from their own website.  It enables users to
    • See how many users already like this Page, and which of their friends like it too
    • Read recent posts from the Page
    • Like the Page with one click, without needing to visit the Page
    • The minimum supported plugin width is 292px
  • Send Button – allows users to easily send your website content to their friends.  The Send Button allows them to send a private message to just a few friends.  Your users will have
    • To send your URL in a message to their Facebook friends
    • To the group wall of one of their Facebook groups
    • And as an email to any email address
  • Subscribe Button – lets a user subscribe to your public updates on Facebook
  • Recommendations Bar – its currently in beta, we will talk about later

Authentication:

Facebook simplify and enhance user registration and sign-in by using Facebook as your login system.  Users no longer need to fill in yet another registration form or remember another username and password to use your site.  As long as the user is signed into Facebook, they are automatically signed into your site as well.  Using Facebook for login provides you with all the information you need to create a social, personalized experience from the moment the user visits your site in their browser.  Facebook Platform uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication and authorization.

Personalization:

Once Facebook Login is added to the website.  You can access the full power of the Graph API to create an even deeper personalized experience for your users.  Graph API provides:

  • To access the user’s Facebook profile
  • To the user’s Facebook Wall and their News Feed
  • To access the user’s social graph

Bring their friends directly to your website all in your own custom experience.

Analytics:

Facebook also you get detailed analytics about the demographics of users and how users are sharing from your website with Insights Dashboard.

  • Daily Active Users
  • Weekly Active Users
  • Monthly Active Users

Apps on Facebook

Building your Business/Website app on Facebook gives the opportunity to deeply integrate into the core Facebook experience.  App can integrate with many aspects of Facebook.com, including the News Feed and Notifications.  All of the core Facebook Platform technologies, such as Social Plugins, the Graph API and Platform Dialogs.

Canvas Page:

Apps on Facebook are web apps that are loaded in the context of Facebook; they refer this as a Canvas Page.  Companies/Business can build app using any language or tool chain that supports web programming, such as Java, C#, PHP or Python.  Its bascially a blank canvas provided within Facebook for your business app.

Bookmarks for re-engagement:

Once a user starts using your (website/business) app, Facebook creates a bookmark to enable users to easily navigate back to your app from within Facebook.  These Bookmarks are available on the Facebook homepage as well as on the Canvas Page on the top right corner in the Facebook.

Social Channels:

To drive more traffic to your app; Facebook enable various channels that enable new users to discover your app as well as existing users to re-engage with your app.  Facebook designed each channel to help engage users and Facebook algorithms help surface the best content for each user.

Currently available channels in Facebook:

  • Bookmarks
  • Notifications
    • User-generated requests: These requests are confirmed by a user’s explicit action on a request dialog. These requests updates the bookmark count for the recipient
    • App-generated requests: These requests can be sent only to users who have authorized your app.
  • Newsfeed Stories
    • Discover Stories
    • Publishing Stories
    • User control – On the Application Settings Page users can control the maximum audience each app can share with on their behalf
  • Timeline – Deeply integrates a user’s top game activity over a given period of time
  • Search – Once your business/website app reaches 10 active monthly users, then Facebook adds your app information into Search Index and Re-index usually happens 2-4 weeks
  • Page – This page different from others; which associates following links and this page holds default title as ‘[YOUR_APP_NAME] Community’
    • Go To App or Play Game
    • Block App
    • Remove App
    • Contact Developer
    • Report App

Analytics[Insights]:

Insights Dashboard helps you business and website owners to track how users are interacting with their app and to build the best possible experience for your users.  Insights includes following analytics details:

    • Feedback for stream stories
    • Referral traffic
    • A breakdown of what user actions contribute to active user count
    • Demographics on authorized users
    • Active users
      • Daily Active Users
      • Weekly Active Users
      • Monthly Active Users
    • The number of times permissions are prompted and granted
    • Track API errors as well as get access to allocations and throttling information

Source: http://developers.facebook.com/

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