Posting to user's wall - difference between wall and feed? - facebook

Question

I've set up Facebook login on my site, and have done a couple of test wall posts when certain user actions occur. I tested it on my FB account, and the posts turned up on my wall (good).
Immediately I had a couple of friends email saying, 'how do I turn these notifications off, they're filling up my feed'.
I'm guessing this isn't a good way to promote my app - it'll piss people off. Unless I have an option at the time of the app action for the user to say 'yes, post to my wall.'
I notice that my posts were also coming up in the activity ticker (on the right of your profile page), and that a lot of game apps post player activity there - is it possible to just post to that and not to the wall? If so, what do I code instead of "/me/feed", "post"?
Thanks

Answer 1

In the activity ticker it is actually the updates from the Users or pages or apps are displayed which actually come from , if you go back to their wall and see, their respective wall.
Feeds are usually the updates and those also come from wall.
One thing which you can do is when providing permission to your app you can make it visible to you only(Only me option) so that none of your friends gets it in his/her feed.
Otherwise there is no other way for now.

Answer 2

Instead of directly making a post through graph API use Fb.ui feed method. This will open a popup dialog which user can accept to be published on wall or cancel:
FB.ui(
{
method: 'feed',
name: 'Facebook Dialogs',
link: 'https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/dialogs/',
picture: 'http://fbrell.com/f8.jpg',
caption: 'Reference Documentation',
description: 'Dialogs provide a simple, consistent interface for applications to interface with users.'
},
function(response) {
if (response && response.post_id) {
alert('Post was published.');
} else {
alert('Post was not published.');
}
}
);
note:all links here should point to domain specified by you in canvas url
A better approach would be to use open graph actions instead a just posting a story on wall. Open graph actions are seen in Activity section of your timeline. The stories are small hence does not seem like spamming user wall. If the number of posts is high it is aggregated/clubbed together.