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Facebook Launches Application Creation API

Posted on October 13, 2009 by jessestay

One of my biggest frustrations as a Facebook API developer of WordPress plugins has been the need to require my users to go out and create their own application in Facebook for their blog. To do so they had to install a “developer app” on Facebook and know what forms to fill out after they did. It was a lot of work and very difficult to explain to people! Today Facebook launched a way to automate that process, their Create Application API.

According to the developers wiki, starting today developers of WordPress plugins and other 4th-party Facebook applications will be able to automate the process of creating applications on behalf of their users as “child applications”. This means for the FBFoundations plugin I launched over the weekend I’ll be able to automatically register the user’s blog as an app in Facebook when they activate the plugin. The user will only need to activate the plugin in WordPress, we’ll grab the API key and everything else, and there will be nothing more for that user to do.

Installing Facebook Connect WordPress plugins just got a whole lot more easy. Can’t wait to play with this and see what others do with it. Stay tuned for an FBFoundations plugin update that includes this. Details are still vague on this, so I’ll update if anything changes – thus far we just have a few wiki articles talking about it.

UPDATE: See my version 2 of this post for an even more interesting perspective on this API.

Rumors Abound as Tweet Scheduling Services are Targeted by Twitter

Posted on October 13, 2009 by jessestay

Several Twitter developers are reporting that Twitter is now targeting scheduling services with its new Terms of Service and Policy Enforcement team. The threats come down to a clause in the Terms of Service stating users accounts could be shut down “If [they] post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account”. Twitter has made it known according to some developers that they plan to enforce the matter.

Tweet scheduling has been quite a popular marketing technique used by the likes of Guy Kawasaki (disclosure: he is an Advisor of my service, SocialToo.com). To schedule a Tweet, users visit sites such as Twitterfeed, enter the Tweet to share, and schedule it in as frequent intervals as they like. Guy Kawasaki has been quoted as saying this method actually brings more clicks to a site, as people often miss the first Tweet from a user.

It is unclear if this move is a target against Twitter developers themselves, or against the users, but if you base it on the Terms of Service alone, it would seem it’s the users and not developers taking a risk. Users should be made aware that if they are a user of such a service and schedule their Tweets multiple times, their accounts stand the risk of suspension according to Twitter.

Other interesting rules on the Twitter Terms of Service you should be aware of that could get your account suspended:

Following large amounts of users in a short time-span

Repeatedly following and unfollowing users

If your updates consist of mostly links and “not personal updates” (like my @jesseslinks or Louis Gray’s @lgshareditems)

If you send large numbers of unsolicited @replies

If you post another user’s content without attribution

Yesterday I contacted Twitter but still have yet to receive a response on this. It is appearing their response is “no comment”. I’ll update here if that changes.

FBFoundations Facebook Connect Plugin for WordPress

Posted on October 10, 2009 by jessestay

One of my biggest frustrations in adapting Facebook Connect into WordPress blogging has been the fact that most plugins out there either have too much, or too little incorporated into them. When you add more than one, you end up calling the Facebook Javascript Client libraries more than once, and often reinvent the wheel for what other people have done. I mentioned this in a wish-list I posted earlier. I want building blocks – I should be able to add a foundation, and add basic building blocks on top of that foundation to get what I want out of Facebook Connect on my blog.

Today I’m giving you that foundation. I’ve written a WordPress plugin called FBFoundations which sets up the bare-bones necessities of any Facebook Connect install. Once you have installed this plugin, the user can log in, and you have access to their login credentials from then forward to do whatever you want with. It’s a foundation – something to build a house on top of, and my hope is that many more FBFoundations-compatible plugins can emerge from this.

For instance, my next step will be to create a simple plugin for WordPress that uses the stream.publish API to post your blog to Facebook, and enable others to do so (tracking the number of comments and likes along the way if possible). There will be no need to add a user log in to that process, nor do I have to load the XFBML init scripts to render XFBML. It will all have already been loaded for me.

The script works a lot like Richard Miller’s “What Would Seth Godin Do” plugin from a UI perspective. At a default (you can configure this in your preferences) the first 3 times a user visits your blog they will be presented with a popup dialog box encouraging them to connect with Facebook. After those 3 times the popup no longer appears. There will also always be a “Connect with Facebook” login button above your comments (assuming they’re wrapped in a #commentform div) that will appear until the user clicks on it and logs in.

Using this plugin encourages each reader to log in through Facebook (remember – there are over 300 million Facebook users. Chances are most of your readers are on Facebook), and enables you to do cool stuff with each of those readers. Hopefully this will inspire others to make other FBFoundations-compatible plugins so we’re not re-inventing the wheel any more. Stay tuned for more plugins from me – what will you build with this as your foundation?

You can download the plugin here. Just download it and unzip it into your plugins directory in WordPress, activate it, and then add the API key for your website. (You’ll need to go to http://developers.facebook.com to add the developer app and add an app for your website if you haven’t done so already)

Or click here to download:

http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/fbfoundations-facebook-connect-plugin.zip

Please let me know in the comments if you see any issues. This is 100% GPL so please make your own adjustments and let me know if I can fix mine!

UPDATE – v0.4 – 10/26/2009: The popup is no longer default and can be turned on/off. Also added meta tag support and better compatibility with 3rd-party comment systems. See this blog post for more info on 0.4.

Here are some screenshots:

Learn How to Game Twitter at My BlogWorld Panel

Posted on October 7, 2009 by jessestay

That’s right – you heard it right. Next week I’ll be on a panel at BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas where we’ll show you all the ways you can game Twitter, increase your followers, and be the top Twitter user in your area. Be prepared though because we’re also going to show you why that’s also not the best focus and how it actually could hurt your brand more than help it.

The panel I’m on is with some big names in the industry, especially in Twitterville itself. My friend Micah Baldwin, inventor of #followfriday will be joining us, along with Lucretia Pruitt, a.k.a. @GeekMommy on Twitter, and one of the Wal-Mart 11 Moms. I’ll of course be bringing my experience with SocialToo and the Twitter API, and we’ll also be joined by Reem Abeido of GroupM Search and Mr. Citizen Marketer, Aaron Strout himself.

We’re going up against some big names in the industry at the same time, so be sure to mark our session and make sure you’re clear which room and what time ours is at. We’re in room 228 from 11:30am to 12:30pm on October 16th (that’s Friday). The session is called “The Twitter Game – How to ‘Play’ Social Networking and Why it’s a Bad Idea”. Go ahead, mark your calendar – I’ll wait…

Are you done? Okay, I’ll wait some more…

Okay, now that you’ve marked your calendar and confirmed that you’re coming to our session and not the others (although I’ll forgive you if you don’t, maybe) let me give just one more motivation for coming. To those in the audience I’ll randomly hand out one signed FBML Essentials book. This book is valuable for both developers and marketers, as it will help anyone trying to understand the Facebook platform get into the hang of things with just a simple knowledge of HTML and maybe a little Javascript.

Also, if you haven’t registered for BlogWorld Expo yet, I’m told you can use PeopleBrowsr’s special code, “PB20” at this link and you’ll get 20% off registration. Now, be sure to thank me by coming to our session!

Who’s the Lucky Twit? Find Out With Kosmix’s New Tool

Posted on October 7, 2009 by jessestay

Kosmix has launched a new tool aimed at helping brands to easily and randomly select people mentioning specific keywords in a short time-frame. The service, called Lucky Twit, is a slot machine of Tweets enabling you to randomly select winning Tweets by keyword. The tool was recently used to find winners of my FBML Essentials book at a Twitter developer event I spoke at recently, and is now available to the public.

To make the tool work, just go to http://www.kosmix.com/labs/luckytwit/, enter some keywords in the upper-right that may have been posted to Twitter in the last week or two. Click the “Reset” button, and your virtual “slot machine” of Tweets will be filled up ready to be randomized. Click the “Spin” button, and like a slot machine the Tweets matching those keywords will spin around randomly, and the selector will stop at one at a random time, selecting the winner.

Such a simple tool has been very much needed by brands sponsoring contests and giveaways on Twitter, and even live events. For instance, recently we hosted a contest on SocialToo where we gave away several free accounts to our service. This service would have made that process much easier.

So give it a try and let me know what you think. I have no disclosure on this other than I think it’s a pretty useful tool. In fact, retweet this article, and in the next 24 hours I’ll use the tool to randomly select one person that retweets the article and give them a free, signed hard-copy of my book FBML Essentials. Get started retweeting now!

Oh, and expect this tool to get used a few times while I’m at BlogWorld Expo next week – follow me on Twitter for updates!