There is conflicting documentation on payment requirements for Facebook apps.
On some places, it says all Facebook apps must use Facebook Credits -- and therefore face a 30% transaction fee -- and other places say only social game developers are required to use Facebook Credits.
If you're building an app on Facebook, are you required to use Facebook Credits for payment or no?
The upcoming change applies only to games that run in the canvas element. Facebook is most likely going to require apps in the future use their credit system. Look at http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/24/facebook-to-make-facebook-credits-mandatory-for-game-developers/
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This is a pretty basic question. I wasn't clear after a bit of research what types of Facebook apps one could create.
I think one kind is a web app which gets incorporated into Facebook web pages. I think it kind of works like an iFrame. Am I understanding this correctly?
I'm not clear about iOS and Android apps. Are they separate mobile apps that use Facebook authentication OR do they get incorporated into Facebook's own mobile app?
Canvas (resp. Facebook Web Games, as it is now known, after Facebook decided to name a new, more directly end-user facing feature "Canvas" for marketing reasons) and Page Tab apps are the ones where the content is shown on Facebook in an iframe. You can use the API & FB login on external websites, too.
Native Android and iOS apps are individual, stand-alone apps, they are not integrated into the official Facebook app; but are using the Facebook platform -
login & API - to create a "social experience" for their users. Distribution of those apps to the end user usually works via the official Play/App store; in addition to the review Facebook requires, Google and Apple might require additional review before your app gets in there.
We'd built an iPad app which is mostly played by children on there parents iPad. Now we would like to implement the ability to share a photo on Facebook. The only difficulty is that we don't want the children to automatically post the photo on their parents wall. Therefor the children has to be forced to login with their own account.
We can achieve as described here:
Disable Single Sign On (SSO) in Facebook IOS SDK
Only Facebook seems to reject apps which are not using SSO as described here:
http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions/10856344/appcenter-rejection-due-to-sso
Are there any other ways of avoiding SSO? Or is Facebook only rejecting the app if it is in the App Center?
NOTE: It seems all the Facebook apps are added to the App Center?
There is a bigger flaw in your application than just SSO. You're forgetting that Children are not allowed to have Facebook Accounts. The minimum age for Facebook registration is 13, so unless your app is targeted to teenagers and older, you should scrap Facebook integration altogether.
For a game we are developing for facebook we would like to use a feature facebook calls "Frictionless payments" which is described in the developber blog of facebook: http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/458/
It allows to let the user buy items in your application without confirming, if the item is worth up to 30 facebook credits and the user got this credits in his account available.
The code example in the blog is not working and the links to the documentation and a link to apply for this new feature are dead. I couldn't find more documentation about this feature but we know it exists as we saw it in other games.
So my question is, how can we implement this feature? Do we need to apply somewhere to use this feature and if yes, where can we do that.
I recall you need Facebook to enable this for your app/game. You have to email them and specifically ask for it. Then frictionless payments automatically happen.
Reference: Facebook Credits API Documentation
May be you could use facebook pay dialog
As for your question on where to apply, here is a tutorial on how to register a company information and payment methods.
Look at this for usage of pay dialog
Here is a javascript example for the same
Hope this helps
Is it possible to accept credit card payments or execute PayPal transactions within a Facebook app?
The ideal flow is for users to browse a catalog and complete a purchase all within Facebook. Is this possible?
If so, could you provide guides/tutorials for accomplishing this?
To clarify, our understanding is FB takes 30% of FB Credit purchases. We for this reason plan on offering either PayPal or credit card purchases, not FB Credit purchases. Is it possible to allow FB users to purchase with PP or CC instead of FB Credits? If we're wrong on the 30% transaction fee, please let us know. Thx!
Thanks!
Starting July 1st 2011 an app on facebook can only perform transactions with Facebook Credits (ignoring in game 'currency') . I have no idea where the doc covering this is, I'm not involved in that side of things.
This page https://developers.facebook.com/credits/ has this screen shot
which shows PayPal as an option to pay.
Here's a link from FishWorld that is explaining the policy on their forums http://www.talltreegames.com/fwf/showthread.php?3807-Facebook-Credits-Switchover-on-July-1st&p=20350#post20350
FaceBook LINKS!
https://developers.facebook.com/policy/
https://developers.facebook.com/policy/credits/
https://www.facebook.com/payments_terms/
Hopefully this random smattering of information is of some help to you. :)
I don't see anywhere listed that 'ALL' facebook apps must receive payments using Facebook credits. On the following page, https://developers.facebook.com/credits/, I see that it is mandated ONLY for GAME apps as of now.
Quoting from the link above:
Note: Effective July 1, games on Facebook Platform must exclusively process payments through > Facebook Credits. Learn more on the Migration page.
If it is not explicit, I would assume that it is not mandated.
Seeing as a regular Facebook app is no different from a website, albeit in a small`ish iframe. Sure.
I'd look at integrating the Express Checkout for Digital Goods solution for an even better checkout experience; https://www.paypal.com/digitalgoods
Note: You may still want to review the Facebook T&C's on this; I'm not entirely sure if this is allowed by them
I am working on a facebook application a game and was wondering how to monetize it. I am new to FB and even the ad market place. What is my best bet to get ad revenue? I mean, which provider should I use? Can I use adsense? What are my options? Thanks for your suggestions.
In reaction to a little adverse privacy publicity (see: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/18/facebook_apps_privacy_breach/ ) Facebook tightened up their advertising policy around privacy and created an official approved ad provider list here: http://developers.facebook.com/adproviders/ listing ad providers who have agreed to comply with Facebook's privacy policies.
I recently did some searches in the Facebook Developer forums and found that RockYou and LifeStreet Media seem to be the most frequently cited providers.
AdSense is not currently on this list, but many apps do use AdSense.
Currently there is Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) over whether using AdSense in a Facebook app will get your account closed by AdSense, and whether it will get your app banned by Facebook.
Those who believe AdSense might ban you frequently assert that AdSense prohibits ad placement in an iframe, which is the only way to do it as a Facebook app. I have read the AdSense terms and can find no reference to iframes being prohibited. AdSense does expect your page to have meaningful content, which would seem to preclude use in some games or other apps that lack text content (think pure flash apps)