Hi
I am developing a facebook app that involves the use of the user's email and ID. Storing users’ info to database is a more efficient approach for the purpose of the app. I am wondering if I am allowed to do this. I have read that facebook does not allow the storage of any kind of user's data for more than 7 days, however officially facebook website does not seem to mention this. Do you have any information about this issue?
The official policies are here. One relevant paragraph is:
"You may cache data you receive
through use of the Facebook API in
order to improve your application’s
user experience, but you should try to
keep the data up to date. This
permission does not give you any
rights to such data."
Related
I know there have been numerous questions regarding Facebook's policies in which we can store information into our application's database. I have looked at Storing Facebook API data and also have looked at https://developers.facebook.com/policy/ but I just want to ensure that I am not violating Facebook's terms of use. I want to store a user's objectID in order to get certain information about them for use on another screen on my application (namely their profile picture) into my database. I was wondering, is that considered okay? I have looked around and haven't seen anything explicitly speaking about storing a user's objectID so I just wanted to confirm this would be okay. If this is not okay, would any one have any suggestions on how I can get a specific user's profile picture? Thanks!
I believe for Facebook's API things like a user's object ID is actually just an ID for that user for specifically your application. Meaning, you have a unique ID for a user that is completely different than the ID that Facebook uses internally or that another application has for the same user. So unless I terribly misunderstand, you can and should store that.
Is it ok for a webservice which uses F-connect to store the friend count (NOT the friends list) from Facebook (or this is counted as a breach in privacy).
As the Facebook Graph API does not allow auth_tokens to be used to get such detail of friends if they are not registered to the webservice.
I have seen people recommending storing the friend count and showing it to others.
I think I can help with this. I did some research on this topic.
Their policy states: "You may cache data you receive through use of the Facebook API in order to improve your application’s user experience, but you should try to keep the data up to date. This permission does not give you any rights to such data." The anwser to the FAQ 'How long can I store data' is as follows: "We have deprecated our 24 hour data storage policy. You may now indefinitely cache data to improve your application's user experience."
For the record, I am not an attorney, so Im looking at their statement from an IT perspective. If I read their statements (which basically says you may store anything received through the API), I would say it is ok to save the friend count.
Is it ok for a webservice which uses F-connect to store the friend count
We don't give out legal advice, consult an attorney. As always free legal advice is worthless, so even if we did tell you anything if it's legal, it's not trustworthy information.
I have seen people recommending storing the friend count and showing it to others.
Facebook says this is ONLY ok if it serves a purpose for your application. Again, consult an attorney before you make any hard decisions.
I want to create an iPhone app that displays (among other things) a specific Facebook wall. For a good user experience I didn't want an app that required the user to have a Facebook account and I didn't want to force the user to have to log in to Facebook to see the latest "news" in the app. I started out by getting the wall RSS feed and tried parsing it ... I can "see" all the data I need ... but that is getting complicated quickly and has too many variables that are making the final results less than stellar. I have read through the Facebook iOS programming tutorials and it seems to me like the SDK forces the user log in, which I don't like.
My question ... Is there a way to use the Facebook SDK with hard coded profile credentials to access a specific wall without forcing the user to login? If possible, is that a recommended approach? Any other ways to skin this cat?
I have read through the Facebook tutorial and searched through many postings on this site but haven't found an answer to this ... sorry if this a newbie question and has already been answered.
Item I.2. of the Facebook API policy list says
You must not include functionality that proxies, requests or collects
Facebook usernames or passwords.
It sounds to me like that's what you're proposing to do; i.e., the user will be able to see a certain wall, but using hard coded credentials (not their own). In other words, your credentials are proxying for the user.
I do not know if it is technically possible to do this (I imagine it is) but I don't think it's a good idea, and I do think it's a violation of the Facebook API terms of service.
First you need to get the a access_token by parsing your app id and secret.
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id=YOUR_APP_ID&client_secret=YOUR_APP_SECRET
Then send following request to get the data you want. Note that only public data will be accessible.
https://graph.facebook.com/FACEBOOK_USER_ID/?access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN
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 created a Facebook app(game) in JavaScript. I used Facebook's php-sdk. I dint make a good use of the sdk except to display the name of the user logged, and his details.
I want to store the score of each user at some place. Checked FQL. As far as I saw, it doesnt allow you to store data, there was only SELECT query available. So is there any way in which we can append the score to user information or something similar.
In short can we store the data on Facebook
OR
We should use our own database server only to store the data.
In general you need to store your own data. While it might be possible to fake it by using some attribute of a user, it's certainly not the way it's designed to work and you can't count on the data always being available. You are better off setting up your own database and use the users' FB IDs to tie the info together.
Facebook now supports posting scores via scores api found here.
You can also publish achievements relevant to the game as in here
These have enough guidance to help you out !