for the App we are developing now, it could be useful to find a way, when people could post the invitation to our App on the walls of their friends, but stay anonymous. For example, the post with invitation would appear as if they were sent by the App. I guess, it is not possible, but if anyone can confirm this or (hopefully) disapprove, i would be grateful!
Nope, it is not possible. You can not post anonymously (or as an app) to a user's wall.
It is possible to send an event invite anonymously*, but it shows up in events, not the wall. I presume that it’s in violation of Facebook’s polices which generally prohibit anything anonymous.
*I just received one, today. I've also been receiving spam “event” invites from people I don’t know (presumably fake or hacked accounts) starting this past week. There’s apparently an apps loophole that was revealed last year, but which Facebook has no interest in fixing.
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My latest project has (had) a requirement for the user to invite their friends to their online service. I discovered that, apparently, as of April 2015 with the new v2.0+ Facebook Graph API, you cannot actually get a list of friends for the user, unless those friends are already subscribed members of your app.
The scenario:
My app is a web service that lets the user collaborate on research work in a private group online. The user needs to
look up their list of friends,
set permissions their friend will have in the group, and
send them an invitation both join the service, and the specific group. (using a unique, one-time use link tied to each recipient)
The user would (ideally) receive an invitation with a specific link for them to not just become a subscriber of said online app, but specifically to join the group they were invited to (i.e. not just a generic "hey, check out this app" type of invitation).
The expectation:
The user doesn't care whether their friend is already a member of "MyApp.com". They expect to simply look up their friends just like they do today from their phone when they connect it to Facebook (makes all contacts available, regardless of whether those friends connected their Facebook to their phone, respectively). Likewise, compare inviting members to your Google docs, for example: look up your contact, set permission, send invite - so easy. Users demand this UX simplicity today and do not distinguish or care whether they are dealing with email, Facebook, Twitter contacts, whatever.
The problem:
The entire point of a social network is to be, well, social. If the Graph API only lets my app access friends that are ALREADY users of my app, it completely defeats the entire purpose - it cuts my user off at the knees, kills UX, no more ability to actually contact their own friends. My understanding is Facebook made this change to prevent developers from spamming users, and I get that, I completely support that. HOWEVER, my company and my app are not the ones that are trying to invite friends for it's own purposes, it is the USER and THEIR OWN friends that THEY have the right to access and converse with for their purposes (or so you'd think). Beyond just friends list, even if I had that, I think there are additional hurdles and limitations with posting messages to friends, even private (not wall) messages, which again would be anti-social.
The Question:
Am I understanding Facebook limitations properly, and if so, what is the work-around? I'd be ok with such an API being locked down until you pass a review that proves you aren't spamming users, but I did not see such an option.
Facebook supposedly prioritizes users over developers, and these changes were made because if the user is not comfortable with privacy (don't spam my friends), then they wont be users any longer, and that obviously affects developers and Facebook. OK, but did they not realize that by locking it down this extreme just killed UX for the user in legitimate scenarios? And to my original point, not just a little, but paramount - the result quite literally is that on April 30, 2015, Facebook became anti-social. Surely this is not inline with their mission. Surely there is a better approach.
If your app is not a game (which I assume), the only viable option would be the Message Dialog as desribed at
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/faq#friend_invite
If your app is not a game and has a mobile or web presence:
You can also use the Message Dialog on iOS and Android, or the Send Dialog on Web. These products let a person send a message directly to their friends containing a link to your app. This type of message is a great channel for communicating with a smaller number of people in a direct way. The Message Dialog and the Send Dialog both include a typeahead which lets the person easily select a number of friends to receive the invite.
You might also find App Invites useful but I beleive it's only for iOS and Android apps and might not exactly fit your use case:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-invites
App Invites are a content-rich, personal way for people to invite
their Facebook friends to a mobile app.
I have an app that a user signs up for that needs to then notify a friend of said user about an upcoming event.
I'm trying to figure out what my options are for how to make this work. In an ideal world, my app would would be able to post to the friend's wall with a custom message (written by the user) at some predetermined time in the future. However, I'm not seeing anything in the API for posting on behalf of a user to one of their friend's walls, so, I'm open to suggestion.
TIA
You can post to a user's friend's feed using the Graph API, assuming the user granted you the relevant (publish_stream) permissions.
POST /[friend]/feed
message=hello...
Users generally consider this very spammy behavior for apps, and so it is not particularly recommended.
Source: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/post/
My app requires publish_stream. When a user accesses my app first time, I want to publish "Username has been started using My Awesome App + icon":
on his wall
on his friend's wall: is a limited number? Can I select his friends with the biggest number of friends?
I do not want to require another confirmation for that (for future another postings I will ask user to confirm Publish)
Is it possible to do that and is it ok regarding policy?
on his wall
Thats okay, but you should use a confirmation dialog, or else you'll get flagged as spam a lot and get rate-limited, etc. Good applications that have value typically don't post on walls unless the user knows about it.
on his friend's wall: is a limited number? can i select his friends
with the biggest number of friends?
that is spam and strictly forbidden. You'll get shut down real quick. Unless an action pertains to a friend (like sending them something or interacting in some way), you should not write on their wall.
I've found what could be a glaring problem with Facebook, or it could be a misunderstanding on my part (hope it's the latter). I have an app that uses the graph API to post links to friends walls (friends of the user, that is). The problem is that if the friend comments on the post, the user is never notified of it. i.e. Facebook doesn't create a notification for my user that his friend has commented on his post. That's a significant issue if you're trying to build an app that focuses on link sharing! Important: I've checked my notification settings several times, and I have the most liberal settings but still do not get any notifications.
It must be that Facebook treats posts by apps differently. My questions are:
1) Has anyone experienced a similar issue, or is there some way to get these notifications of comments to work?
2) If this is an inherent limitation, is there a way that my app can pick up on comments in response to posts made by my app? I can probably save the post id and regularly check back for comments...but that sucks. A better way would be to subscribe to changes in the post, although it doesn't look like Facebook's real-time updates support this. Maybe I'm answering my own question.
Facebook has acknowledged that this is a bug. The bug report and response by Facebook can be found here. Facebook has assigned it as a Medium priority issue...
We have created an invite function at our site in JavaScript using the Graph API where users can invite their Facebook friends to our site. The users invited then get an invite post at their wall on Facebook.
This has been workling fine until suddenly one day the messages did not show up on the invited users wall. We even still get post sucess messages from Facebook and a Post ID.
Also, we nocticed that old invite posts were removed as well from the Faceook walls. However, other functions with the same app ID still work.
When we created a new Facebook app with a new Facebook app ID the invite functions work like normal again.
As far as we know we arent breaching any rules or regulations, and we havent been notified by Facebook (although we are quite active with FB ads).
Is there some risk Facebook have blocked our app without telling us? Can they block our domain if we continue? Are there any general rules when it comes to invite? Any tips?
Facebook has many anti-spam policies and procedures in place. If a high enough percentage of users delete the post that gets added to their wall or mark it as spam or choose to hide all posts from your application, the application will get removed and the posts removed as you have experienced. They may or may not email you to warn you.
Facebook has a high level guide to follow:
Create a great user experience
Build social and engaging applications
Give users choice and control
Help users share expressive and relevant content
Be trustworthy
Respect privacy
Don't mislead, confuse, defraud, or
surprise users
Don't spam - encourage authentic
communications
I am guessing they are flagging your account for not helping users share expressive and relevant content (I am guessing they don't get to type the message that gets shared on friends wall), as well as obviously for spam.
If you want to invite users, I would suggest using the supported method for this, the Facebook requests dialog, and move away from posting (spamming) other friends walls, as they most likely can ban your whole website or account if you keep doing what you are doing.