Today, a new way of posting to the News Feed in Facebook appeared on the Facebook Developer’s wiki. Facebook introduced “Feed Forms”. To use a Feed form, you simply create a regular form as you would any other form, but add a special “fbtype” attribute to the form. The only documented value listed thus far is “publish”. Facebook then intercepts the form, reads the url in the action parameter, and prompts the user, asking them if they want to publish the story to their friends.

To use a “feed form”, the url in your action parameter for the form should return content in the form of JSON with a simple feed response. The example they give for return JSON data is this:

{ "method": { "fbtype" : "publish",

           "next": "http://my.canvas.com/next_page.php“,

           “feed”: {”title_template”: “{actor} published status”,

                    “body_template” : “New status is \”{status}\”",

                    “body_data”     : {”status”: $_POST[’status’]}}

}

I created a sample form that looks like this, returning the above data (changing the url) in application/x-json format:

<form action=”http://fbmlessentials.staynalive.com/index.php”>

<input type=”text” name=”status” value=”" />

<input type=”hidden” name=”action” value=”feedforms” />

<input type=”submit” value=”Submit” />

</form>

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem this feature is live yet (or I’m just doing it wrong), as my returned JSON data just gets returned back to me when the form is submitted. I will post screen shots as soon as I hear confirmation that it has gone live (I expect that to be next Tuesday, when they usually do pushes).

Does this mean Facebook is doing away with the automated posting of News feeds by applications, or is it just one more way, and better way to make your feed story more likely to appear in your user’s friends’ news feeds? There is no official word from Facebook yet as to how they intend to use this.

On FacebookAdvice.com (the official blog for the book, “I’m On Facebook — Now What???”), I go over how you can use Facebook Notes tagging to get the attention of those with larger networks in Facebook. This is my first time using video, so be light on me! I see a lot of potential for using video in this manner, so expect more! Click here to read more on FacebookAdvice.com.

Jason and I are excited to announce that HappyAbout has launched their Pre-order page for “I’m On Facebook — Now What???”. You can order it here:

http://happyabout.info/facebook.php

The Paperback edition will sell for $19.95, but all those who order now get a 15% discount, making the book just $16.96. The eBook can be pre-ordered for $11.95. We are anxious to get this out to print quickly as one of the First books of its type on Facebook, so order quickly!

In addition to that, today we received our Afterword from Robert Scoble. Robert’s experiences with recently having his account closed (and re-opened) on Facebook are perfect timing for why this book was written. We are excited to have his contribution! Thank you Robert, for the hard work and time, even in the process of having your account closed by Facebook, CES, being so sick over the last few days, and switching jobs, that you have put into the Afterword.

Robert’s Afterword completes Lee Lorenzen’s Foreward for the book that we have already received. Lee, founder of Adonomics and Appaholic, and well known expert on the subject, is known for predicting that Facebook will be worth $100 billion, and thus far his prediction is very much on track! Thank you again Lee and Robert for such great additions to the book!

Again, order your books today!

UPDATE: Are you a blogger? HappyAbout, our publisher, has a great affiliate program! Sign up here for a commission when you blog about the book!

I’ve been on the Google Reader band wagon for a long time now. I currently subscribe to about 150 feeds, and I read or skim over probably near 1,000 or more feed items a day. Reading my feeds is how I stay up on the latest and greatest, and how I am able to give the best advice to my clients. Instead of me going to news, now the news comes to me, which, despite the amount of news I read in a day, has made me actually more productive.

Google Reader has recently added a friends feature. Now, all those on your GMail or Google Talk contact lists that use Google Reader will appear in a Friends list to the left of Google Reader. You can choose to turn your friends’ feeds on or off in the settings (upper-right of Reader), and even invite more friends to begin using Google Reader. As your friends “share” the feed items that they like, you also get to see what they are sharing. This feature in effect has actually started bringing me even more news. It will be interesting to see the SEO effects of this as people no longer subscribe to blogs, but rather rely on their friends sharing their favorite blogs with you. Personally, I think it will improve the odds, as now more people will see your blog due to the viral nature of this system, and more people in result will be persuaded to subscribe to your blog - this time through Google, improving the SEO chances of you appearing in Google personalized results for that individual.

Here’s how I use Google Reader. Bloggers may want to take note, as this could provide some tips as to how to further improve your posts to fit with the power Feed readers out there.:

• Skim, Skim, Skim! - There’s no way I would get through all 1,000+ of my feed items if I read every single one of them. I skim over the headlines, and sometimes the content, then move onto the next item. Only if the article is important to me do I read the article in detail.
• Learn the Shortcuts - There are 3 or 4 shortcut keys that are essential for me. I use the ‘j’ key to open the next item and mark it as read. I use the ‘k’ key to move back to the previous item. I use the ’shift-s’ key combination to share the item I’m reading if I think those that are friends with me might be interested. I use the ’s’ key to start items I want to “bookmark” for later - this is Google Reader’s equivalent to del.icio.us. I then use the ‘r’ key to refresh the list I’m on - I like to click on the link “x new items” and read through those. Then, when I hit ‘r’ to refresh, it only shows me the new items I haven’t read yet.
• Add as many friends as you can - The more friends you have, the more information you receive. If a friend isn’t providing productive feeds, then perhaps you can take them off, but besides that, information is good!
• Stay on top of your feeds - if you don’t check them several times throughout the day, they will build up, and you’ll be stuck spending an hour or two in the middle of the night catching up. I like to use my cell phone when I’m away from my computer to go through my feeds. Google has excellent mobile tools, and Reader is no exception.
• Don’t use iGoogle - I was using this for awhile, and realized a) I couldn’t use the shortcuts, and b) I couldn’t utilize the sharing or starring features. Perhaps if they improve it I’ll go back.

Those are the strategies I use to read through my feeds in Google Reader. What strategies do you use? Please add me as a friend - you can either add me as a contact in Google Talk, or shoot me an e-mail and you’ll automatically be added to my Google Reader Friends. jessestay at gmail dot com

I’ve been considering doing this for awhile - we’ll see how long it lasts and when my wife puts an end to it. If you look in the upper-left corner of the blog, you’ll see the “Ask Jesse” Show stream. If I’m online, when you click play you’ll see me, live, as you are on the blog!

Here’s how I did it:

1. Create an account at Ustream.tv
2. Click on “My Shows” - there you can configure the look and feel of your show page if you want
3. Click on the “Go to Show URL” link next to the “Broadcast Now” button
4. You’ll now see an “Embed Stream” html snippet in the lower right of the page - copy this, then paste into your html layout for your blog
5. Click “Broadcast Now”, and you’re live for all your voyeuristic viewers to see!

The Camera I’m using is the Logitech Quickcam Communicate STX. It has great picture, includes a built-in microphone that detects how far you are, and the camera comes in with built-in software that follows where your face is (or two faces if you’re more than one person). I’m half-way across the room, and you can still hear me well, and the streaming results are almost real-time! (Scott Lemon says it took just 14 seconds from him Twittering to me saying I received the Twitter)

Some issues to watch out for:

• Make sure you’re appropriate when your camera is on! Put a sign up or something reminding those entering the camera area that they are being recorded.
• Be careful if you talk to sensitive business clients. You may want to mute, or stop the stream altogether so sensitive information isn’t broadcast out to the entire world
• Be sure your router can handle the bandwidth. I use a Gigabit Linksys WRT350N Router, and my Comcast connection has 8 Mb down, and about 3 or 4 up (at times). Search for “Comcast Speed” in the search box in the upper-right for some tips on how to speed up your home internet

My big prediction for 2008 is it will be the year of streaming video, and you’ll see more and more people embracing such technologies. I think I’ll try this for a bit - I think this can be a great way to drive people to stay on your blog longer. People are naturally voyeuristic, and want to know more about the person whose writing they are reading. If they can actually see them and chat with them, they are likely to stay longer, bringing more traffic to your site.

As I was testing my auto follow script for Twitter and helping Chris Pirillo (see the comments in the link above) get his set up, I realized it wasn’t working for him. After a ton of hacking around, going through all aspects of the auto follow script, and Net::Twitter, I realized there was an undocumented (it’s now partially documented) feature in the Twitter API which states that a page must be specified with a “friends” or a “followers” request. I noticed that Net::Twitter was not checking for paginated results on these requests, therefore I’ve created a patch to make that possible. You can download that patch here (after installing Net::Twitter):

http://www.jessestay.com/Net-Twitter-jessestay.patch.gz

Just patch Twitter.pm (usually in /usr/lib/perl/site_perl/5.8.8/Net/Twitter.pm) with the above file (after un-gzipping it), and you should be set.

On Twitter, it is generally polite to follow those that follow you - they are saying, “you are interesting”, so it is the polite thing to show interest in them as well. I have heard from multiple people, including Scoble and Chris Pirillo that they have requested Twitter do this for them.

Well, I’m proud to announce that I’ve written a script that does just this for you. It’s a simple script, that does just what it says it does - auto-follows those that follow you. To install the script, download this script, unzip it (gunzip), then edit it. You’ll need to specify your Twitter username and password in the specified places, and if you want to blacklist any screen-names you’ll want to add those in as well. Then, add the script to a cron job somewhere, say, in cron.hourly or cron.daily, and it will now auto-follow anyone that follows you on Twitter! If you get any bologna (as I call it - others call it bacon) followers, you can simply add them to your black list in the script and it will ignore them.

If you have any problems installing it or running it, please comment. This script is being released under the GPL, v.1. Again, you can download the script at:

http://www.jessestay.com/auto_follow.pl.gz

I’ll post it to CPAN later as I get time so it can be downloaded there.

UPDATE: you’ll need to have Net::Twitter installed - you can install this by running “perl -MCPAN -e ‘install Net::Twitter’”

UPDATE (11/14/2007): Chris Pirillo has pointed out that it’s hitting an API limit if you have to follow more than 70 users within the same hour. If that is the case, set it to run on cron every hour, and eventually it should catch up. Twitter can also add your username to a white list if this is important to you and contact them. If you are on that white list, it should follow everyone in one swoop.

I was discussing with a client today about this, and realized I still had not blogged about this yet. Facebook has launched Developer Accounts. Now, no longer do developers have an excuse for errors on their pages, or sites going down because they are working on their production Facebook app, which is their only development environment to work in. Also, no longer do developers have to risk all their work deleted because they opened up a mock Facebook account and Facebook decided to kill it because it wasn’t a real person. I strongly suggest you start using this if you are a Facebook developer.

A few months ago, Facebook announced they were releasing their platform to all developers via an open API. At the same time, they release an Application Directory indexing and categorizing all of the applications for their platform. I was wondering today if Twitter, who had an open API even before Facebook, had the same thing. It turns out they do, and it’s on the Fan wiki:

http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps

Not quite 5000+ like Facebook, but there are quite a number of apps I didn’t know about. What Twitter apps are your favorites?

I noticed yesterday that Twitter has officially launched the ability to update Facebook through your updates on Twitter. You just click on the Twitter app within Facebook, and you’ll see a link that says, “Want Twitter to update your Facebook status? Click here.” Click on that, the message will still be there (they say they’re working on that), but all your Twitter updates will now go to your Facebook status as well. Any Twitter replies (with @username in them) stay on Twitter and do not go to Facebook, resolving my previous concern.

UPDATE: Twitter doesn’t ignore just any post with an @username in it. The post has to start with @username for Twitter to ignore the post. I’d love to see it just ignore anything with @username, since Facebook friends won’t know who @username is anyway.