Facebook Like Box feed is empty despite there being many post by the page, or only shows posts when logged out of Facebook.
In one case the feed only shows posts made on the iPhone with location info (despite these being months older) and shows no other posts. It does this not only on the website were I have the feed embedded, but on FB's dev page preview where the like box code is generated.
This problem exists the same in all browsers.
So two solutions to this problem.
Note: not all FB pages are alike. Selective rollouts of new FB features are applied to certain pages progressively or by creation date. Thus why this problem doesn't appear in all pages.
Two causes for this feed problem:
Being logged in as an admin can cause the feed to not show all posts. Thus the problem doesn't exist for non-admins. Logging in as a non-admin or without any FB login at all shows the feed normally as it should be.
(in one case I worked with, only posts made by iPhone with Location info would show to admins, while all non-admins saw every post for the page).
Feed inactivity. If no posts have been made in a certain amount of time(I don't have an exact timeframe) the feed will show nothing, not even the "Show More" drop down. On one project (observed in Feb-March 2012), simply creating a new post fixed it instantly. Not sure how permanent or temporary this glitch is, or whether FB is/has fixed it.
Also, not sure what (if any) correlation this problem might have to linked twitter, tumblr etc accounts.
Related
I want to check if a certain post, given by its permalink, still exists in a group on facebook.
I tried with lynx and wget, expecting a 404 if the post had been deleted, but I got the message "your browser is not supported". Amazingly, facebook uses around 500k of javascript with trackers, arrays of language translations etc...
I've been looking at graphAPI, but it appears I have to make an app, which then have to be approved by facebook, then installed by an admin in the group.
Neither of these things are likely to happen.
Are there any "3rd-party" API's to facebook which allows (read-only) access to a facebook group as an user?
My last option is starting a VNC-session, start a browser, log into facebook, then periodically feed the browser an url from a table, wait a few seconds, capture a section of the screen, and if there is no text on it, (i.e. all white), then the message is gone.
This is possible; I've done it before to check if a list of websites produced the desired result and generate a page of miniatures.
I've created a Facebook application that successfully posts to Facebook pages, and creates the link preview with the photo successfully.
However, when posting to Groups, often the post only contains the message parameter, and does not successfully create a link preview.
I've also seen this happen with Hootsuite--all the posts to the Facebook Pages are correct, but the post to the Facebook Groups sometimes contain no link preview / picture.
Is there some undocumented Facebook functionality that is causing this to happen? I have posted some pictures with this question as well showing what I mean.
^ Here is the application posting as a Page
^ Here is the application posting as a Group, 80% of the time. (Other 20%, the link preview works correctly.)
There's limited support for posting to / reading from Groups via the API - as far as I know it does not work the same way for groups as it does for pages or user profiles, which leads to the discrepancy above - I don't think there's any other API available to make it work the way you're looking for
I have an app that allows users to share the page to specific users by clicking on check boxes next to their name and then doing a bunch of posts. I received an alert in February that said I would not be able to post to friends' walls unless there is a dialog box.
However, I noticed if you sign a petition on Causes.com, they do something very similar where they post the petition to a bunch of friends' walls.
I'm curious how they get away with that. Maybe I'm not familiar enough with the Facebook API.
I'm not sure if this helps, but Facebook does have business partnerships with certain sites/companies that have more privileges to their api keys, facebook app. This could be one of these instances.
One instance of this is, when you go to a major site and the site is able to read your facebook session, and within that site they show your name and picture once the site is rendered. In essence, these sites already know who you are.
When setting up pages on Facebook, there seems to end up 3 pages.
A Page that represents the website, i.e., when someone Likes the website, they like a newly created Facebook page that represents this website.
A Page that represents the brand, this is a true Facebook page, as created by the user.
An Application Profile Page, which is created by the user because the website in (1) allows endusers to login using their account.
Pressing Like on the website does not +1 the like count on the brand page in (2) above, likewise, liking the brand page doesn't update the count shown on the like button on the website either.
The App posts updates to users profile, with a link back to the App Profile Page, although it has the same functionality as the brand page, is empty as the brand page is the one being maintained.
You can't choose a username for the app profile page, nor change its category, nor 'use' facebook as this page, nor 'check in' to a profile page, nor set any other information like address/phone number; so you wouldn't want to use the profile page as the brand page as it's missing these features.
To clarify, the Graph API contains 3 objects that essentially represent the same thing, their types are as follows:
type = "page"; representing the brand
type = "website"; representing the website of the brand
type = "application"; representing the ability for the website to login via Facebook
Each of these Graph objects collects their own Likes.
How can the likes be collected under a single identity? Why can't a single Graph object/page have all the features that each type of page above has to offer..?
So, a few thoughts:
The Open Graph tries to represent the world as a collection of Objects, with Types. A Facebook Page is one type. A website is another. You might have a Facebook Page, but not a website. Or a website, but not a Facebook Page. An Application is something completely different too (although it's confusing, since they DO give Applications profile Pages...). Lots of folks with websites and applications don't use a single App.
So they do not always represent the same thing, which is why they are not the same thing.
But sometimes they do, sort of, represent the same thing (as in your case).
When this happens there are a couple tricks you can do to improve brand coherence on Facebook.
1) On your website, point the link button to your Facebook Page
<div class="fb-like" data-href="http://facebook.com/mypageurl"></div>
This way at least you have a slightly more unified Like count. You can't hide/disable Page likes, so the best you can do is try to funnel website likes to Page likes. Users will see your Page Like count on the website, and when they like your website your Page count will increase.
2) Have a link on your App profile page to your regular Facebook Page
If you are using an App to publish things, there is that small tagline at the bottom of the post that links to the app. Some folks will click on it. Just add a link to your description in the sidebar saying "Visit our page here!". If there is nothing going on with your App page except a link to your real Page, I don't think you will collect too many Likes on the App page.
(I think you could also set up a custom landing tab on your App page that redirects users to your Facebook Page if you want to get real fancy. It used to work, at least, not sure if it still does.)
EDIT: 12/9/2011 Facebook is removing App Profile pages:
http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/611/
It's all kind of a pain, I know. Perhaps worth filing a bug about? But there is a reason why things are the way they are, I don't think you have to worry about the App page all that much, and there are some ways to mitigate the problem.
Good luck!
I have found that if a user posts a few links via 'whats on your mind' or graph api link publish that only the first 1-2 will show on their friends news feed. After a couple within an hour, no further link publishes appear in the friends area.
Secondly, i have notice that if you have 3 friends a -> friend -> b -> friend c that if a publishes a link, b sees it (except in the case above) and if b clicks 'Share' you would think that c should see it in their news feed. they do NOT at all. Note, this is using facebooks own 'whats on your mind' widget.
Should I log these as a bug, the 2nd is particularly concerning as links dont share. If its the graph/edge rank, then it appears that posting someone elses link doesnt have much ranking ? why isnt it just like posting your own link. even that seems to fail after a couple..
Facebook groups and filters content based on a variety of factors.
If someone is posting dozens of links from your site it's logical that they would stop showing up with any visibility in other user's feeds as the links have effectively become spam. After a period of time [short for a few links, long for many] things reset but if it's persistent you can see a page banned.
There's no bug in that, it's the intended functionality to keep Facebook relevant.
As far as sharing, again, Facebook will try to group similar items together and in the case of 3 people who are all friends already, this generally results in a single "story" with two individual "comments". If there are no comments with the share I'm not sure Facebook passes the activity along if the user has already seen the story.