Im currently building a simple time based quiz game with Javascript. In this game im looking to enable the option of being able to challenge your facebook friends.
This has naturally had me look at the Facebook (API) tools available that would allow me to interact with the targeted friends to be challenged.
Im wondering if anyone could comment on my approach of the Facebook tools intended to be used and whether there's actually some better approach or even Facebook tools that I have missed and should consider in my setup.
My intention is to interact and engage with the friends I challenge / invite using the most relevant Facebook tools available.
1. FB Login - USER CREATE / LOGIN
The user connects through Facebook login - either creating a
user profile or automatically getting logged in upon visit, if the
fb_uid already exists in the DB. We get access token, email and all the basic stuff.
2. FB Request dialog - CHALLENGE YOUR FACEBOOK FRIENDS
The user clicks a "Challenge your friends" button and the Facebook Request dialog is initiated showing the inbuilt Facebook multi friend invite selector box. The user click some friends and submits.
= RESULT - A request to the friend is now viewable and visible in the App center
3. FB App Notifications - Engage more "visible" with your challenges friend
Upon submit from step nr 2, we would also initiate a App Notification call to the Graph API, that would eneable us to "post" a notification direct into the challenged notification tray.
There are some restrictions on which user you can post directly into the tray at, which would leave us to do some pre-checking on the basis of:
3.1 - First check if the challenged/invited user already has authorized the app
3.2 - If 3.1 is true, then initiate the App notifications Graph API call = notification posted to the tray.
One important note to this step - i've read that before you can initiate this call, then you need to fetch the Access token of the app itself and make the call to the Graph API with the app access token and not the user access token - not sure if anyone can confirm this.
3.3 - If 3.1 is false, then we're just left with the request to the app center.
QUESTIONS:
Q1. The intended interaction of challenging/inviting your friends in step nr 2 "worries" me a bit. Seeing the request ends up in the App center ONLY, the only way the user will see the notification is "accidently" seeing a number next to the App center left menu link. To me it seems unlikely few people will react to this??
Q2. The real engaging interaction seems to be in App Notifications - however you can only use this with users that ALREADY have accepted your app, leaving out a big chunk of people to interact more "visible" with.
I do know this restriction is probably due to spammy behaviour.
Are this really the most optimal approach of the Facebook toolset I can use in my little game?
The general idea of your approach seems fine. I've never had any experience with App Center, so i can't really comment on how effective and easy it would be implementing that approach, but there is an alternative.
Instead of inviting friends through App Center, you can simply leave a message on their wall using JS feed dialog, asking them to join you in the game (Leave a link or something that will handle the challenge part)
Related
Is it possible to submit my 3D WebGL HTML5 / Facebook Canvas app to the App Center, even though it does not use the Facebook API? It isn't integrated with Facebook in any way, other than, being embedded in..
https://apps.facebook.com/flappy-wheels/
..from a Dropbox-hosted URL, if that even counts as a technical "Facebook integration" - which I doubt, as no API usage or Facebook signup or login required to even play it.
I keep on trying to submit it for App Center review but it insists to think I'm using the FB API when I'm not. Does this mean usage of the FB API is absolutely required for App Center submission? What if I dont want my app logging in to people's Facebook accounts? What if I don't want it accessing their personal information, or posting for them, or any of that jank? What if I just want it to be a game to simply be played embedded in a FB app URL, with no actual FB integration or interaction? Can that not be put on the App Center?
It thinks I need 3 permissions, one of which is logging in to people's accounts, I think these 3 permissions are put there in settings by default, how do I removed those permissions from my app settings, as those permissions listed aren't being used in my game, as it isn't using any FB permissions?
A smaller question on the side, what is the "tagline"? Like, it is the keywords / searchable tags, right? I'm used to them being called just "tags" and not a "tagline" so just to be sure I know what it is.
Thank you so much for any help or suggestions!
Yes you can always submit the html5 game on facebook canvas but for App Centre listing its necessary. Also using dropbox, github hosted sited will have less server resources allocted to them and hence high load time - i recommend to use any other hosting services out their, but remember https is a must.
Tagline is like a punch line for any product just go on the same theme.
I have an app where a user creates some object and invites people to interact with it. It's not a game and it's not a canvas app.
I tried to get requests to work probably and couldn't
After reading a bit, I understood that these don't work for non-canvas apps anymore.
So...
1) Does anyone know if this is going to stick? It's extremely painful that stupid games like candy crush are allowed to create requests, while apps that might actually provide users real value can't. If there's anyone from FB here, I'd really like to understand why this discrimination is taking place?
2) Are there any alternatives? Sending a message or feed post are possible but, I need to either a) generate a unique link per invitee or b) get the list of people the user sent the link to. Both don't seem to be an option with messages and feed dialog.
3) Is is ok to just embed my web app in the canvas as is?
Thanks
Yaron
Facebook policy indicates that you should not use app requests to send users to an external website. However, an embedded web canvas app is fine. It will let you use the apprequests function to render the Request Dialog and provide a user invite experience similar to the most popular Facebook games.
When I start using an app on Facebook, the app shows "10K people using this app", but before to do that I need to "subscribe" to that app (click a button telling me that I'm going to be using that app) How do I do that with my own app, so I can keep track of the amount of users using it?
Besides, when someone starts using my app (an online magazine) I want to update their activity with something like "John Doe is Reading < Name of the App >"
What elements of the Facebook API do I need to achieve such behaviors?
The "number of people using this app" statistic is added by Facebook automatically to the app authentication dialog. If you want to show it in your app (manually), you can make a call to /{your_app_id} and use the weekly_active_users or monthly_active_users count.
As for the activity, Facebook automatically posts "User is using App". You won't be able to do "User is reading app" as the page needs to be a object-type that accepts 'read'. 'Read' would only work if you are reading a blog, article, etc.
If you are interested in pursuing it anyway, you need the publish_actions permission and you need to register the read action in the App Settings. The facebook documentation has everything you need to get started.
I have a question about increasing visibility of Facebook app notifications.
As far as I can tell, there are only 2 places where Facebook app requests appear for users who don't click the "Apps & Games" section - in the top right section (https://skitch.com/nicksoman/8172w/facebook) or in the jewel (https://skitch.com/nicksoman/81737/2-facebook) - I believe the wording is a bit different on this one if recipients haven't used the app, as it references an invite rather than a request.
As other have noted, neither of these channels provides any context around the request. In the past I've seen context for apps like BranchOut and FarmVille, but I can't replicate this behavior by sending invites from these apps now (can anyone)?
Has anyone found a Facebook-approved way to either provide more context around these app requests or make them more visible?
I'm familiar with the history of Facebook tweaking channels due to abusive apps - just want to make sure I'm current on best practices today.
Are you referring to users who haven't authorized your app or users who did?
Basically, facebook calls this Social Channels and you have a few options, again, depending on if the user is already using your app or not.
If the user is using your app, you have the bookmarks bar which can be used by issuing a App-generated requests.
If the user isn't using your app then a friend of his that is using your app can send him a User-generated request.
You can and should encourage your users to publish your app stories to their friends' feed and/or to send them to friends.
There's that "Automatic Channels" which is discussed in the first link in this answer.
More options are to use the Social Plugins in your website, and to have a mobile version of your app.
I'm developing a test Facebook app to just get a feel for the platform.
Programatically I can send invites with the FB API.
I send my friend an invite and he can accept the invite which takes him to my app. If he leaves the app, he can't get back to it because it does not show up in his Apps list. His Apps link says App Requests. (Is Facebook A/B Testing this?) Of course, he could bookmark the app but he shouldn't have to. The other thing I noticed. Is in my Facebook dev apps dashboard my User count is still 0.
Main question: He can't see a link to the app anywhere? And also me as the developer can't see a link without going into the Developer app.
Is this because the app is not listed/published yet in the directory? This is very confusing. Help.
Facebook is redoing the invite system. They introduced the new Requests system early in the year, and recently released v2.0. Requests under the new system will remain until you delete them programmatically or the user clicks the "X". http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/dialogs/requests/
As for user count, unless you request authorization and they grant it, your user count will stay at 0.