I read the Facebook developers guide, but I'm not sure to have well understood wheter my goal is achievable or not.
I have developed a small app that asks to users their topics of interest, so they will receive filtered updates on those topics. This currently works, my database stores users and topics.
Now I want to publish on registered users stream a newsfeed if there are updates on the topics they selected (in the oauth dialog I asked permissions for "publish_actions").
My app doesn't use OpenGraph, I would that the newsfeed has my apps as title, a small picture and a brief description and it links to and external site (not mine).
The feed is personalized, so that's why I don't use a Facebook page.
Is it possible to realize this?
Thanks in advance
This is not allowed by Facebook Platform Policies. Publishing something to the wall must be related to something the user has done, e.g. User has read an article or User has achieved a high score. Posting an link / article to the user's wall is not allowed since it's not a direct action the user has taken.
Instead, you should provide the user with personalised RSS feeds. Each user would have their own RSS feed related to the topics they have indicated they are interested in. Facebook shouldn't be used in this way.
Related
I'm developing a Page Tab App for a contest/promotion and my client wants participants to share a certain post on their own wall to be eligible for winning. I have a few questions about this:
Is that even legal, under Facebook's promotions guidelines? Note that we don't want the user to share to be able to participate, but to be eligible for winning.
How would we go around the privacy issue for each user? I mean, can we force a user to share a post publicly, even if the normal setting is - for instance - "friends only"?
Still on privacy: can I even access who shared a certain post by using the Graph API, or get a callback response from Facebook when the user shares a post? I don't think so - the only way I see it is that the contest administrators would have to check every user's wall to see if he/she shared the post publicly. Is that how it's normally done?
I know some of these questions are duplicated but couldn't find a proper answer, so I'm asking them together here.
Im toying around with integrating facbook into a website. Basically this website will generate acheivements for each user after X amount time (starting from a day up to a year).
I want to post these milestones to facebook automatically (with users prior permission). Does facebook allow this?
This article seems pretty darn explicit that its not.
But i have seen lots of posts on SO that are scheduling posts while trying to figure this out. Perhaps i have terminology's mixed up or something. Could someone explain this for me please.
If its not possible, does this mean that the only time an app can post to a users facebook wall is when the user explicitly clicks something to the effect of "post to my wall". Meaning they would need to login and manually approve every milestone?
Thanks
No, it's not possible to post something on behalf of a user automatically. According to the facebook's policy, even if a user grants you a publishing permission, actions you take on the user's behalf must be expected by the user, i.e. user must be aware of the actions you are taking on his behalf. As the article says, this can be done, for example, by prompting user with a dialog box with a link to Share a photo to their timeline each time your app would like to share to the user’s Stream.
Facebook however permits scheduled Page posts, but I guess this is not what you want. You can read more about it here.
After some advice.
I have a client wishing to have an app which lets them download a voucher to redeem in store but only after they post details of this offer onto 5 friends' walls.
My understanding of current Facebook policy suggests that:
1) Promotions can't require users to take any action on Facebook other than to like the page (likegate);
2) Messages posted to multiple friends at once should be unique and personally initiated - i.e. an app shouldn't bulk post to multiple users. Instead users should share things on their own wall....
Am I correct in this understanding?
If so, can anyone point me at the relevant facebook policies - can't seem to find them on the site.
Yes, those are exactly what I read on the policies page. However to be absolutely sure, you should have your corporate attorney read them and consult with you.
See
http://developers.facebook.com/policy/
and
http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php
I want to add the 'Log in with Facebook' option to my website, however I'm unsure how to integrate the information gained when someone logs into my website with Facebook with my current Google Analytics.
Is it possible to link up a visit in Google Analytics with a user who has logged into the site with Facebook to enable me to see things like age, gender etc?
Any help you can give me on this would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Ben
you may have to do this via a redirection or possibly a frame.
Google Analytics does nolt track individual users, it provides anonymized data. So at the top level, no you cannot do this. However, there are a few more things avaiable to you. One: Facebook provides facebook insights, their own tracking suite, that will give you demographic information on the users of a facebook app or fan page. You site will effectively become a facebook app when you use their user authenication, so you will be able to get insights tracking on you site. At the present moment, facebook insights and google analyitcs do not itegrate or share data. Facebook insight also provides anonymized data, so you will not be able to identify an individual through the tracking.
The final option is, now that you are tracking users through login, you can implement your own tracking info on your site to see what individual users are doing, and attempt to track their preferences.
Its also entirely legal (in the United States at least) to buy access to marketing data and use use your registered user name pool to get additional information.
If you wanted, you could set up a "funnel" in Google.
When a user logs in through Facebook, you could send them to a specific page and then track their progress from there...
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55515
So using this you could get the percentage of users who log in through Facebook... etc.
But to collect information other than that, you would have to get the correct permissions documented here eg. user_birthday (to get the user's Birthday) and query the Graph API from there, thus implementing your own tracking of users.
You can query the Graph API using the various SDKs that Facebook provide explained here.
First of all you should check out this Google document. It explains, how you set a custom unique user id via google analytics.
Further you've to send an event to google analytics (e.g. 'fb_login') via the callback function of your facebook login function.
i'm developing an application for a university exam, using Appengine and Gwt (Google products) and i'd like to implement Facebook this way:
- give the ability to a FB user to login to the application through facebook (did this implementing the oAuth2.0 flow, so now i have the user's access token and his permissions)
- since the application is for being notified when a professor publishes some material for his course (this is all handled by appengine), i'd like to notify the user when a professor publishes some material, through a wall post or a note from my application in a way that it writes to the user something about the new published material.
I've been looking through EVERY single resource online, and couldn't find an answer: a lot of similar questions but no answers.
Writing the POST is not a problem, and for the moment i'm trying with the api graph explorer.
I manage to write on the user's wall/note as if he's writing himself or (if the user likes the application) write all the likers a wall post/note (but the same to everyone).
But i don't find a way to send personalized wall posts/notes to every user in response to some specific material published.
FB doesn't allow to do this because is considered spamming?
You can't directly post things to your user's wall as a way of notifying them - wall posts are intended to be things the user posts from within your app (for instance, they find something in your app interesting and choose to share it with their friends, so they click a 'Share' button).
You could try using an App-Generated Request (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/channels/#requests). This will increment the user's Bookmark Counter, and when they click on it they will enter your app and you can show them the latest news.
OR, you could ask for the 'email' permission for your app, and send the user an email notification when something is new.