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Wanna Learn Facebook Development? Check Out My New Video Series

Posted on March 19, 2012 by jessestay

Facebook application development isn’t just a skill, and it’s not just for developers either – it’s a mindset and a culture that you have to understand to truly understand and implement its value. It’s something both marketers, business owners, as well as developers should understand to fully have a grasp against the competition in this increasingly social world. That’s why I jumped at the chance to work with the popular online learning site, Pluralsight, to do a new series on Facebook application development. My first video went live yesterday, and I hope will be the first in a line of videos you can use to hone your skills both as a marketer and developer to take advantage of the most of Facebook Platform.

In my first course, you’ll learn why Facebook is such a valuable tool to integrate with your business or marketing strategy. I’ll show you example apps that have seen success on the Platform, and then take you through, step-by-step, on how you can set up a custom Facebook Page tab on Facebook without any HTML knowledge necessary to get started. You’ll end understanding the different integration points you can use to build an app, or just integrate Facebook into your existing website or app design. I teach you social design philosophy and the different touch points you should understand no matter what your skill set.

Whether you’re a marketer, a developer, or business owner I think you’ll enjoy this course. I think you’ll be surprised with what you’re able to accomplish by the end, and what your understanding will become when you’re finished. If you’ve ever wanted to get your hands dirty with what you can fully do on Facebook, this is a course you can’t neglect, regardless of your skill set.

The course is part of Pluralsight’s learning platform, and I hope will be one of many future courses you can learn from on these topics. It also joins Facebook’s own Yasser Shohoud’s Facebook Platform Overview that serves as a great primer for where my course will take you.

When I considered this I thought about just doing my own video series and charging monthly for access to those. I would have likely charged around $100-200 for access to that for it to be worth it to me. I realized though, that by partnering with Pluralsight, you could get my content, as well as hundreds of other courses from other experts that are top at their game. Instead of $200 for one-time access to my videos, you can pay as little as $29 per month (you cancel whenever you like) or $299 per year and get unlimited access to mine and anyone else’s courses on their platform. To me I think it’s a great deal.

With this course you’ll get:

Material for all types to understand – marketers, business owners, and developers
Step-by-step videos taking you through the entire process, which you can step away from at any time.
Assessment to test your knowledge at the end of the course and grade you on your understanding of the topics covered
Knowledge of why you should understand Facebook Platform
Step-by-step tutorials on how to build custom Facebook tabs
Hands-on videos giving you the basics of Facebook’s developer platform, allowing all to understand all they need to get started
Access to all future courses on Facebook by me and others.

If you want to understand Facebook in a way your competitors don’t, go register for my Facebook development course today! The tips I cover are things not many in the industry know, and you’ll have the upper-hand in your industry.

To register, just click here and follow the instructions. Then go over here to my course’s Facebook Application Development page to get started in knowing what your competitors don’t!

For the first 20 commenters that ask below I’ll give a code for a free unlimited 7 day trial to try the service and take my course.

Counting "Real" Likes on any URL – Evaluating the Salt Lake City vs. Fresno Campaign

Posted on January 3, 2011 by jessestay

In the last week I saw one of the most amazing campaigns of unity amongst 2 communities, Salt Lake City, Utah, where I live and where I asked for your help, and Fresno, California. Both cities were entered into Walmart’s “Fighting Hunger Together” campaign in a race to get the most “likes”. The prize? 1 million dollars donated to the Food Bank of the community with the most “likes”. $100,000 would be donated to each of the next 5 communities with the most “likes”. Thanks to yours, and others’ help, both Salt Lake City and Fresno seemed to take off the most. Both cities launched media blitzes, a telethon of sorts, that telethon lasting more than 3 days, begging viewers, listeners, and readers to like their communities in hopes to rally the individual community to earn their cool $1 million towards the hungry and homeless. I don’t know of a TV or Radio station in Utah that wasn’t talking about this every 15 minutes or so. Campaigns were even set up to help people set up their Facebook accounts, and then close them when the campaign was done! It was a Christmas Miracle to see both communities fighting so hard to win, Fresno outranking Salt Lake City by around 200,000 votes at one point, but Salt Lake City sprinting to the finish, obliterating the competition. In the end, Salt Lake City rallied, soliciting over 5 million votes, completely overshadowing Fresno at second place by over 1 million votes. The third place city didn’t even eclipse 500,000 likes.

The real story though is how each city grew their “likes”. Walmart was counting “likes” by the total on the like button embedded in the website. You can see that still on my previous article soliciting your help (click the link), something any website can embed using Facebook Social Plugins (I also included the HTML so others could embed it on their sites). The “like buttons” tally votes by the number of shares of the URL, followed by the total number of comments on each share. It’s hardly a count of the total number of people that actually liked the post, and some would argue, not a fair tally. Fresno was even calling foul, perhaps out of jealousy, that Salt Lake City was using tactics such as creating Fake profiles, sharing the page thousands of times, and encouraging others to click through and like each share on the Fake profile. Of course, Fresno was doing the same. It was rather ironic that in the end Salt Lake’s total “likes” exceeded the total population of Utah as a whole! I’m sure it could be possible, especially considering bloggers like myself were sharing outside of Utah to solicite votes, but hardly believable. Of course, Fresno was in the same boat.

There is a way however, for anybody to get the “real” tally of votes for a URL with Facebook Graph API. It turns out with Graph API you can pass a URL to it to get the ID and additional information about that URL. So, without further adieu, here are the actual “like” counts for both Salt Lake City and Fresno:

Salt Lake City (click the link to see the Graph API response): 136,820 total likes (unique people)

Fresno (click the link to see the Graph API response): 89,578 total likes (unique people)

So, it would appear that, no matter how you “like” it, Salt Lake City still won the competition, fair and square. In one of the most amazing feats of unity around such an amazing cause, I’m proud of my city because of this. Salt Lake City gets social media. We get how to rally, and we get how to work with each other to help out the homeless. As a result, Utah’s Food Bank believes it can turn that 1 million dollars into 7 million dollars with the programs it has in place. The 4th place city, Ogden, Utah will also get $100,000 – Utah Food Bank has pledged that the $100,000 from Ogden, along with the $1 million will get shared across the entire state of Utah, multiplied by 7 in helping the poor and needy. Homeless from all over the nation actually flock to Utah because of our Homeless programs. THANK YOU for your help. I know many of you voted, and I’m sincerely appreciative for this.

If you ever need to tally the “real” likes for an Open Graph URL that uses the “like box” Social Plugin, use the technique I mentioned above – simply pass https://graph.facebook.com/http://pathtoyoursite.com to your browser and you’ll get the likes for your site.

Again, THANK YOU!

If you want tips like just like this one, be sure to pre-order my next book, “Facebook Application Development for Dummies”. Any “dummy” can understand cool stuff like this!

I’m a Dummy! My Next, and Third Book

Posted on April 21, 2010 by jessestay

It’s been 2 years since the release of my second book, FBML Essentials, and everyone keeps asking me when I’m going to write my next. I admit I’m a little addicted – it’s why I write on this blog. I hated writing for others in High School and College, but since I started writing for myself I have really gained a sincere appreciation for writing. Once I wrote my first book, I’m on Facebook–Now What??? with Jason Alba, I was addicted. I love writing! That’s why I’m proud to announce that I have signed an agreement with Wiley to write Facebook Application Development For Dummies.

What will it be about? To tell you the truth, I’m still working that out. My thought is to keep this one extremely simple. I want it to be so simple even marketers and brand managers can learn at least a few ways to integrate Facebook Connect on their own websites, or find ways to integrate their brand straight into Facebook. I’d like to hear from you though – what would you like to learn about Facebook Application Development? What would you like to learn about the Facebook Platform?

I’m honored to be working with Wiley in this effort. They are my biggest publisher yet, and from my dealings with them thus far they are going to be a joy to work with. My wife has agreed to not see me for the next 6-9 months (I love you honey!), and I’m still keeping my day job and running SocialToo. Yes, I’m crazy. I think in the end though, based on my interactions with each of you, we need a completely simple instruction on how to get started with the Facebook Platform and what it means for developers and brands. My hope is that with the time I spend on this book I might be able to benefit each of you in getting started with this incredible platform.

Facebook Application Development For Dummies will go to print some time at the end of this year, and, having learned from my last 2 books, you can bet this book will be very up to date and will have ways of remaining up to date long from its publish date. Tell me what you want it to include!

I’ll be at Facebook’s F8 developers conference tomorrow (I’ll be one of the only guys with a FriendFeed T-Shirt on) – come look for me! The first 4 people to mention this post to me at the conference get a free, signed copy of FBML Essentials.

In the meantime, be sure to become a fan of FBML Essentials and I’m on Facebook–Now What??? on Facebook, subscribe to this blog, and I’ll be sure you get updated when we have a home for my new book.