I publish actions from by website using the app I created for it on facebook.
My actions have been approved by FB.
when they are published they appear on the activity log.
However they do not appear on the timeline and do not show on the main pages of that user's friends, only under activity log.
How can I make it so the actions are posted to the timeline itself and all the user's friends would see it on the main page?
Thank you
What you want is Explicit Sharing. Just Open Graph by itself doesn't guarantee your content will be pushed into News Feed and/or Timeline.
Explicitly_shared on its own does not always seem to be effective.
I have experienced this myself (and still do), where although the "explicitly_shared" attribute is set to "true", the post does not show up on timeline.
On checking the activilty log, is is marked as "allowed on timeline" but not "shown on timeline", which seems to need to be set manually and results in the correct post. I presume there is a way to force this, but I have not yet found it!
(the app is approved and live, with publish_actions enabled)
Related
I have been working on a Facebook app for some time, and we are having trouble getting the app approved. I feel like Facebook's app approval process is a constantly moving target and their explanations are provide the least amount of detail possible, leaving the door open for further rejections.
We are using a Facebook app to provide sharing functionality for products that are behind a paywall. All of our share buttons are custom, so they fit in our designs (we don't want to use the out of the box buttons). We first built the app attempting to use the recommended share dialog with open graph actions and stories. The problem here is that you can only use the share dialog with a shared link. Facebook reads any open graph tags on the page to provide sharing information, but because there are many different "products" on a given page, we can't use open graph tags. Because of our environment, we couldn't use the actions or stories. Furthermore, we'd like to customize that share information, so using share dialog is not an option.
Unfortunately, we had left our open graph stories and actions in our app when we first attempted approval. In our first denial, Facebook told us that we had implemented our open graph actions and stories incorrectly. We were not using the share dialog, but the 'feed' method, which is deprecated in 2.0 but still works. Thinking that Facebook looked at our app and noticed we were not using those actions correctly, we figured if we removed those stories and actions from the app, Facebook would see our share method worked and approve us. Wrong.
We had built the share using the publish_actions permission, along with FB.login() and FB.ui(). Facebook denied us because our app did not need publish_actions. They recommended we use the share dialog which did not need login or permissions.
We removed the publish_actions permission and FB.login(). When we tested this, you could still login to Facebook and perform the share WITHOUT fb.login(). So we thought it was good to go. It was not; Facebook told us we needed to implement login(), even thought the docs say you don't need it.
Now we have reimplemented login() and are going to try to get it approved again, but I have a feeling it's going to get rejected due to the 'feed' method being deprecated.
So my questions are:
A) If you have a website providing a paid service, how do you allow your users to post to their feeds, using the newer share method, with data you'd like? Eg: "I just completed the Get Moving III workout at teamexos.com!" The post would contain no pics or links. If it had to, a link to teamexos.com would be ok.
B) How do paid sites provide open graph actions and stories? Do they have public links to their products? Do those products have their own individual pages, with their own open graph tags?
First of all, the feed dialog is not deprecated, at least not anymore. You do not need to get anything approved for it, and you certainly don´t need login: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/reference/feed-dialog/
But: Your example looks like an Open Graph story, you should consider taking a look at those: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/opengraph
I just established an app which is my personal blog on Facebook. I have had action "Publish" approved and it says this action type is now available to all users. But when I publish a new post from my blog, it only shows in my timeline, nothing gets displayed in the news feed, and I asked my friend to check their news feed, they got nothing. Can anyone help me with this? I have been stuck since yesterday. Many thanks!
My blog is built upon Wordpress, but I think it is something to do with the OG API. Please help!!
Michael
You have to activate explicit sharing for your action. Then it will be shown up as a normal posting of a user.
Facebook controls everything about what will be shown in the news feed. Check if the action is shown in the Ticker. If the actions is shown in the ticker, it's OK.
If your app gets more popular, the priority to be shown in the news feed may increase.
One of the ways to check if other users are seeing your actions is to go to Insights > Open Graph > Story CTR and see if your action is getting impressions.
You should also drop by Action Lifecycle and check how many actions are being created and compare that with your internal number just to make sure that all the actions are being picked up.
Based on what you are saying, you might be using the "Publish" action when a post is made on your blog. If you are the only person posting, chances of those stories appearing in your friends' feeds is very small. You might consider using Open Graph for something that multiple users/readers can do on your site.
I'm using FB Open Graph in my application. It's not fully working. When I post a object it appears in the user's recent activity; however, it doesn't appear on their timeline. The metadata has no errors and I'm using the FBGraph gem but it also doesn't work when I do it using curl. Any advise to fix this?
Have you tried to use 'fb:explicitly_shared=true' in your URL. Refer: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/technical-guides/opengraph/explicit-sharing/
When you are in development mode, and your actions have not yet been approved by Facebook, the posted actions are only visible to you and to others with developer, admin or tester privileges for your FB app.
See: Facebook action submission
Also, open graph actions will no longer appear in users' news feeds or even the Ticker: http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/398546930211799/. So you shouldn't expect activities performed in your app to appear in users' timelines, unless these activities are tagged as 'explicitly shared', and even then there's no guarantee they'll show up.
Only direct, active shares are more or less guaranteed to show up in the Timeline.
Did you submit your action to get approved by facebook? If you did not do this, it will only work on your facebook account.
Also, are you sure you request the correct permission when the user authenticates, such as 'publish_stream'?
when I try to share a message to Facebook wall using fb.ui, if I didn't enter any message, the post will not appear in timeline but it did appear at my friends' News Feed. I've check activity log, the post activity is there, but it just did not appear in my timeline unless I put a personal/customized message myself. Did anyone encounter this? Just wondering whether it is a bug or it is supposed to be working that way.
Yeah, Facebook filters the feed with their own algorithms. If it's the feed of the developer it will always be shown from what I've read. It will always be in the activity log, but not necessarily shown on a friend's feed (non-developer) based upon facebook's own algorithms.
I'm a web developer and i'm having problems using the "like it" button
I put the buttom on my site as a counter of votes of a special contest. People can only click the like buttom if they are fan of my Facebook page.
The problem is that people can't vote if they haven't public permissions on his facebook, cause i can't know if they are or not fans of my page.
Is there a solution?
if you rely on information that you are not certain that you can obtain then sadly there is no solution.
Since what you are doing is beyond a simple like button What you may want to try is open a facebook application and request from your users the user_likes permission. You can read more about it here. I have photo albums on the "highest privacy setting" - only me. Yet when I request a list of my photo albums through one of my applications (with the required permissions of course) I get back ALL of my albums.. This might have been a temporary issue that was solved - but in any case - I saw this behavior and I thought it might be relevant to this post :)
Additionally you should look at the Promotions Guidelines specifically this point :
You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.
I had some problems with facebook on this issue - you are not allowed to require someone to "like" a page in order to participate in an activity that is not directly connected to that page.
From what I understand you are requireing people to like your page on facebook beofore voting on your site... If this IS the case then facebook might very well start taking action and closing your page/app.