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How Do I Import Google Reader, Delicious, and Other Services Into Facebook?

Posted on March 17, 2009 by jessestay

With the new Facebook home page design, the visibility of all my updates is making other people aware that I import my Google Reader, Delicious, and other activity into Facebook. It is one of my most frequent questions asked in the messages I get on Facebook. For this reason I thought I’d share how I do it. Believe it or not, no app install is required for this – it’s built right into Facebook.

Services Available

First of all, the services you can import into your Facebook wall feed:

Yelp

Photobucket

Flickr

Digg

Picasa

Delicious

Google Reader

Youtube

Stumbleupon

Last.fm

Pandora

Hulu

Blog/RSS – you may choose one blog to import (in addition to any note imports)

Start by choosing which of those you belong to and use, and which you would like to share with your friends. Now to set it up.

Set Up

Set up is easy. Click on the “Profile” link in the top nav bar. Then, under the “Write Something” publisher box, on the right, there is a “Settings” link. Click on that, and you’ll now see a list of sites you can import. In the list of sites, just click on the one you want to import, and follow the instructions. Click “import”, and you’re done! If you ever want to edit or remove your settings, just click on any of the services and you can change any of the settings you want.

Importing the other sites you frequent can be a great, viral way to initiate discussion amongst your friends and family. It can also be a great way to bring more exposure to your brand or business if the articles and links on the sites you share belong to your business, and others can always re-share on their profiles, so it is viral as well. So there you have it – you too can import these sites into your own profile.

1 Prediction Down, 7 to Go – Facebook Launches Connect for the iPhone

Posted on March 14, 2009 by jessestay

Beginning of February I announced my 8 late predictions that I thought would happen in 2009. One of those, which I actually mentioned originally last year, was that Facebook would launch a developer platform for the iPhone. Such a prediction was hinted at last year by Facebook, was supposed to launch end of last year, and it would appear that this morning it came true. As of this morning, Facebook announced they are releasing Facebook Connect for the iPhone, and announced several of the first apps using it.

The platform integrates with the iPhone XCode platform and provides libraries that make integration of Facebook into any iPhone app easy. (Here’s where I get geeky, so beware) Per the documentation, the basics are that developers simply include the libraries in this manner:

#import “FBConnect/FBConnect.h”

Following that, the basic component of the app is the session object. To create a session object, you just need to provide code similar to this:

session = [FBSession sessionForApplication:myApiKey secret:myApiSecret delegate:self];

Following that, you’ll want a basic login button you can provide to users that authenticates the user and connects with the session object. To display the login button, use code like this:

FBLoginButton* button = [[[FBLoginButton alloc] init] autorelease];
[self.view addSubview:button];

Once the user is logged in, the session object should have the session key from Facebook, and you can make normal Facebook API calls from there. From there, you can get the session key and the session secret and send them back to your servers for processing, or make simple calls back to Facebook directly from the iPhone app using the provided libraries. Facebook provides this sample code as an example on how to do it from the iPhone:

– (void)getUserName {
NSString* fql = @”select name from user where uid == 1234″;
NSDictionary* params = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:fql forKey:@”query”];
[[FBRequest requestWithDelegate:self] call:@”facebook.fql.query” params:params];
}

– (void)request:(FBRequest*)request didLoad:(id)result {
NSArray* users = result;
NSDictionary* user = [users objectAtIndex:0];
NSString* name = [user objectForKey:@”name”];
NSLog(@”Query returned %@”, name);
}

It would appear that 2009 is right on track, and I can’t wait to see what more Facebook has in store for us with the recent launch of their new design, new focuses, and more. This alone may be enough to get me even further into iPhone app development as the iPhone finally has the potential to become much more “Social”.

Is Facebook Testing Popups?

Posted on February 9, 2009 by jessestay

Today I was visiting a friend’s Facebook Group, when out of nowhere a popup appeared, asking me to take a survey. Being on a Mac, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t spyware or a virus. I checked the other sites I was on and none seemed to be the type to do this, and Facebook was the last site I had any activity on. The ad popped up right as I entered the particular Facebook group. I’ve contacted Facebook and am awaiting clarification on this. Is Facebook testing popups amongst its users? Could this be from one of their ad partners? Has anyone else seen this? Here’s the ad:

Looking for a RockStar Facebook or OpenSocial Developer?

Posted on January 20, 2009 by jessestay

SocialToo.com has been a huge success for me so far. Just this last month we have gone from just less than 1,000 users to over 7,000 users, and that number shows no sign of slowing down. We’re starting to monetize the site, via one-time purchases of various services, advertising, and will be adding some premium features very soon. I’m slowly actually starting to monetize a service based on Social Media, and thus far, I’m proving it’s going to work.

However, I’ve just about exhausted my resources financially to continue supporting this on just my own savings alone, and have decided it’s time to find something full or part-time that can supplement SocialToo. I am also looking for financing and investment as an alternate source of income, but in tough economic times I have to put my eggs in multiple baskets to ensure something works out.

So, here’s what I have to offer. If you’re looking for a RockStar Facebook, OpenSocial, Twitter, YouTube, or you name the Social Media platform developer to take your app to the next level, I’m your man. I have a very strong software development background which you can see on my LinkedIn profile. I have written two books on Facebook, one on Facebook Development and FBML for O’Reilly (see those in the upper-right of the blog), and one on Facebook professional growth and marketing. I speak and teach others regularly on the subjects of Facebook, Twitter, Social Media, and related topics. I have a good following on multiple networks and a great platform to build your brand as an employee or consultant for your company. Any such relationship would be announced in full disclosure here and any other place it makes sense to mention the relationship. In addition, I am an entrepreneur at heart, which means I have passion in the products I help build. I love seeing these things grow to become successes!

I can develop software – I wrote SocialToo.com from the ground up, by myself (with thanks to some great advisors). I can market Social Media. I am learning to monetize Social Media. I have a successful business, and have helped businesses based on Social Media become successes. So, if you or your company are looking for someone with my skills, let’s talk. We can talk full time relationships, consulting relationships, temporary relationships. I’d love to help you out. Oh, and international is definitely an option – I speak fluent Thai, some Spanish, and even some Indonesian and am no stranger to learning new languages and cultures!

At the same time, if you know anyone looking for a good investment that will make money in the near future please forward them my way. In either scenario, SocialToo will continue to grow, will continue to be a focus (while if I work full time for you it will be a side-focus), and you can continue to expect to see the same growth you always have as we move forward. At the same time, I’m a hungry entrepreneur.

You can read my LinkedIn profile at http://linkedin.com/in/facebook

My contact info is in the upper-right of this blog.

Please Re-Tweet

Photo courtesy the talented Brian Solis

Facebook Launches Custom Tags, Helps Developers Share Their Code

Posted on January 13, 2009 by jessestay

Facebook just released documentation about a brand new feature surrounding FBML that I think is game-changing. They call the feature “Custom Tags”, and the concept is simple. You create code on your servers that renders Facebook-compatible code. You register that code as a “custom tag” on Facebook’s servers, set it as private or public, and now you can represent that code you just wrote as a simple FBML tag. Here’s the clincher: You can make your tags available to other developers!

So here’s an example, based on their documentation (it looks as though the documentation is still being uploaded so it is limited at the moment):

Let’s say you create some code that generates FBML code that looks like this:

(${attribute_name} will be used to replace any attributes passed to your custom tag.)

All you need to do is register that tag in your server-side code (which in this case would be at http://external.facebook.com/apps/my_movie_app) with the FBML.registerCustomTags method, passing it the name of the tag, and the FBML markup to replace the tag with when it is encountered on the page. In this case, and based on the wiki documentation we’ll call that tag, . Your code on your page (or other developers’ pages that use your code) will look like this:

Through this simple method, Facebook has provided an easy way for Facebook developers to share their code, in a nice, compartmentalized way. It also makes it very easy to re-use developers’ code across applications and throughout developers’ apps. Facebook says this is only for Facebook Apps, and does not yet support Facebook Connect or third-party sites, but they do have plan to support such. As more details emerge I’ll update you here, or on LouisGray.com. In the meantime, check out my book on FBML, FBML Essentials to learn more about developing with Facebooks FBML Tag language.

You and Your Friends’ Facebook Updates are Public, After All

Posted on January 6, 2009 by jessestay

Nick O’Neill recently wrote about the possibility that if Facebook would just open up your status updates, Twitter could be put out of its tracks. Well, actually, Facebook updates are open – it’s just up to each user to release them. Any user on Facebook can provide their friends’ status updates to any third party provider, through a simple RSS feed, and this feed has been around since April of 2007!

To obtain the RSS feed is simple. Just click on “Friends” in the header at the top of Facebook and select “All Friends” in the drop-down. Now, look up in the URL bar of your browser (this works best in Firefox or Safari) – see the little RSS icon? Click on it, an voila, your friends’ status updates will come, in a live feed, straight to your RSS reader. There’s nothing stopping developers from creating a service around this, asking for this URL from users, and providing a Twitter-like interface around it. The URL goes in this format, and it’s completely controlled by the user, because a key must be provided to the app that wants to use it (this is for me and my friends, key obviously omitted):

feed://www.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=683545112&key=xxxxxxxxxxx&format=rss20

This also works for your own updates. To get an RSS feed of just your updates, you have to go to your mini feed page at this url (I can’t find a way to get there through links on Facebook – if you know of a way please let me know in the comments). On the right hand side of the page, you’ll see a “My Status” link. Add that to your RSS reader and now all your personal Facebook status updates will go to your reader! Again, with a key you give out as a user, any app can now use this data to track your own status updates. In fact, FriendFeed is already utilizing this feed! The URL for personal updates is in the format of (I’m leaving my key in this case so you can see my own updates):

http://www.facebook.com/feeds/status.php?id=683545112&viewer=683545112&key=77b2714b66&format=rss20

Of course, any developer can also access these updates, with the user’s permission, via the Facebook API as well so theoretically you don’t even have to collect these URLs. However, through this method, anyone can track you, and your friends’ status updates with your permission. So your Facebook updates are public, sort of.

Apple, Safari is Worthless to Me at the Moment!

Posted on January 3, 2009 by jessestay

Okay, I know no one at Apple reads my blog, but this is wishful thinking on my part. I’m getting really desperate, and so are what seems to be hundreds of others who have recently upgraded to the 10.5.6 update on the various Mac and Apple forums on the internet. The issue lies around Safari, and Facebook, and Gmail, and sessions. When I use Safari, no matter what I do, after about 30 seconds, Facebook logs me out. I can’t use Facebook in Safari. After 30 minutes or so on Gmail, it becomes unresponsive, and refreshing returns a 400 Bad Request error.

The only way I’ve found to fix this is to reset Safari, reboot, or clear all my cookies, but then, another 30 minutes later or so, all the other problems resurface again. I tried downloading the latest Webkit build, still no go. I tried reinstalling Leopard, still no go. I tried installing the full package from Apple.com for 10.5.6 and it still gives me the same issue. Each time I think it gets fixed, but a few minutes to hours later the problem comes right back.

It would appear that I’m not alone on this issue, either. Just doing a google search for “10.5.6 safari cookies session” or “safari gmail 400 bad request” returns page after page of users having issues. Threads like this one and this one prove there’s a serious issue here, with no response at all from Apple.

I’ve switched to Firefox, which actually I prefer, but Firefox is extremely slow for me on my Mac when compared to Safari for some reason. I want my Safari back! Apple, please, if anyone is listening, we need a fix soon! I am powerless without this update, and I’m really, really close to just getting a PC.

Stay N’ Alive Now Supports Facebook Connect!

Posted on December 25, 2008 by jessestay

Thanks to the Disqus team, along with the guys at Sociable, we’re now supporting Facebook Connect on Stay N’ Alive. It all starts over on the right under Community, where you can see other Facebook users that have visited the site recently. Then, now, when you comment, if you logout of Disqus, and then choose the login option again, you’ll now have the option to login via Facebook Connect and have your comment identified as such. The Disqus guys are continually working to improve this, but now you have one more option to communicate on the site. Oh, and when you comment, your friends should also see your comment in their Facebook News Feeds! Just a little Christmas gift to my readers…

Are You Addicted to Twitter?

Posted on December 16, 2008 by jessestay

Are you addicted to Twitter? Janet Meiners Thaeler (@Newspapergrl) thinks I am. Guy Kawasaki has a great SocialToo survey asking the question. Janet even gave me an award for it! (and I sincerely appreciate it – I love awards!) I’m not so sure I’m addicted though. Even though I do have near 10,000 updates on Twitter and am active on the service, I think I use FriendFeed much more, and in a much shorter time frame I have near half that in likes and comments on FriendFeed. I think I also use Facebook more – I wrote two books on it after all.

Twitter is a tool, and I use the best tool for the job. This is part of why I left Twitter a few months ago – Twitter wasn’t doing what I wanted it to. When I realized I wasn’t going to get better from other services I came back. Twitter is where I post my thoughts and share things that I can’t post to this blog or elsewhere. This status propagates my Facebook status (through the Twitter App on Facebook), as well as FriendFeed, where more people comment, and I can have more personal, lengthy conversations in those places. Twitter is a tool I use to meet new people, to share thoughts, and build relationships, just like I do on FriendFeed and Facebook.

Could I leave Twitter? You bet. If another service with a much larger network, and just as many opportunities comes along with an actual revenue model and something I could rely on to not delete my followers or data, I’d leave in a minute. It’s part of the reason I have a close eye on FriendFeed, and have built an early hold there to build a strong network. I see potential there. I’m not addicted – I use the best tool for the job. I’m building a network everywhere I go.

The honorable Chris Brogan (if I may call him so) enlightened me back at BlogWorld. He was joking around at the time, and I can’t even remember our conversation that led to it, but his comments were something to the effect of “Listen, TechDork, technology doesn’t solve problems! Humans do!” Oh how right he is. How do you define Social Media? Social Media is about the technologies we use to enable real-life relationships. Emphasis on real-life. If a service isn’t doing that for you in the most effective way, or if you can’t do it with just one service – be prepared to leave. We can’t afford to be addicted to these services. I know I’m not.

Janet had a great idea though. What awards would you offer your Twitter friends? Janet and Larry Weaver have come up with “Social Media Awards” you can create for your friends. Share yours below.

Potential Applications of Facebook Connect in E-Commerce

Posted on December 15, 2008 by jessestay

I’m way too late on this, since it’s been mentioned several times already, but I thought I’d share a little presentation Jesse Pickard and the Razorfish guys did that I had the opportunity to help out on. Jesse asked me several questions about Facebook Connect a few months ago, and he turned it into this excellent presentation on potential uses of the platform for E-Commerce. In it, he uses iTunes, the iPhone (I still predict that’s coming – I always have, as has Facebook), and Amazon all as examples of potential integration points for Facebook Connect. These types of services have tremendous potential to see maximum success from integrating social networking into their own e-commerce platforms. They do risk some privacy, but that’s the advantage of Facebook – they are one of the few services out there which allow for privacy controls of their users, and they are only getting better at it.

I’d really like to see more e-commerce organizations embrace Facebook Connect. If I can be of help in doing so, please contact me! You can read more about it via the presentation Jesse Pickard made:

Portable Social Graphs – Imagining their Potential[swfobj style=”margin:0px” width=”425″ height=”355″ src=”http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=fbconnectrazorfish-1228360493956517-8&stripped_title=portable-social-graphs-imagining-their-potential-presentation” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”]

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: retail marketing)