http://seesmic.com/embeds/wrapper.swf
Okay, I’ll admit, I did beg and get an “F8” shirt from the booths (which I lost and I’m still bitter about), but any chance you could send me (or even let me buy???) a shirt with the Facebook logo on it (like the waiters were wearing) to add to my collection Facebook? Pretty please? 😉 (oh, and I promise no more silly posts like this in the future)
Ben Ling just announced that the iPhone will be an official Facebook Connect launch partner. As I mentioned earlier, this is part of the developer course today. I’ll be staying tuned today to try and find out more information on how you can include Facebook in your iPhone App building process as the day goes forward.
In an announcement about the launch of FacebookConnect, and going head-to-head with commenting services such as Disqus, IntenseDebate, and others, David Recordon from SixApart has announced the integration of MovableType comments with Facebook.
When commenting, the service recognizes your Facebook account and automatically takes the information from your Facebook account and posts it into your comments on your MovableType blog.
Your Facebook Photo gets automatically taken from Facebook and integrated right next to your comment. MovableType then links your comment back to your Facebook profile for others to learn more about you. Not only that, but SixApart automatically takes your MovableType comment and posts it back to your Facebook profile.
This is only the beginning of Facebook Connect and it will be interesting as you see more sites like WordPress, FriendFeed and Disqus doing similar things. The Social Web is truly becoming transparent.
In a recent blog post announcing the developer track at F8, Facebook made brief mention at the very end of one simple, yet very significant announcement. From the post:
7:00-7:45pm Made for Mobile
Jed Stremel and Pedram Kayani (Q&A with Joe Hewitt)
Mobile is everywhere. On Facebook Platform, too. These devices are opening up and creating new opportunities to build Facebook applications that extend beyond the Web, for ten million mobile users and growing (fast!). Jed, Pedram, and Joe give insights into mobile application development and show you how to get started using Facebook’s new development framework for the Apple iPhone.
It seems I may have been right, and we’ll find out for sure today at Zuckerberg’s keynote, but Facebook may just be about to launch an entirely new mobile platform for developers, starting with the iPhone. Of course all this is speculation at the moment, and the above mention could be referring to something else, but it’s looking more and more like mobile is Facebook’s future.
I will be streaming the event live via my Qik streams through my cell phone throughout the day. I’ve syndicated my Qik stream to StayNAlive.com so you can just pay attention here and you’ll get all the latest, live updates from F8, including the Zuckerberg keynote at 1:30pm PST. (Please forgive the lack of titles – I’m still working on that!) You can also catch the keynote via Facebook’s official stream here.
Oh, and btw, I just got the very first printed copy of my FBML Essentials book – if you want to see it in person, come look me up!
I’m proud to announce that this week, just in time for Facebook F8 and OSCON, my book, FBML Essentials, will be available for purchase in print at most book stores. You can purchase it on Amazon here (be sure to leave a review!). It is scheduled to ship this Thursday, July 24th. You can also check it out online right now via O’Reilly’s Safari book store.
Some of the biggest Facebook bloggers and experts in the industry have also contributed their thoughts. Nick O’Neill, of AllFacebook.com and SocialTimes.com, contributed the Foreword for the book. Rodney Rumford, of FaceReviews.com and Gravitational Media, contributed the Afterword for the book. Justin Smith, of InsideFacebook.com and WaterCooler, was generous enough to provide a quote for the back cover (we’re hoping it made it in – I’m told it has). I’d like to thank them for their contribution.
FBML Essentials is essentially a very simple “nutshell” book that should give you all you need to get started with Facebook development in the FBML tag language, minus the API itself. It covers a howto on creating Apps from start to finish, using simple HTML and FBML to get a simple App off the ground. I go over different quirks with HTML and Javascript in regards to how Facebook parses them. I also cover the way Facebook talks to your servers, and provide a few suggestions on where to host and how to get set up properly and make your App viral. The final one half or so of the book is a thorough reference of almost (Facebook just added 2 more tags last week) every single tag Facebook provides, including examples, sample HTML that Facebook renders, and more. I even cover some unknowns (while maybe not so useful, but fun regardless) such as the tag, and tag. (yes, there are such tags, and as of the writing they work!)
If you are a web developer considering learning Facebook development, this book is a great start, and should point you in the right direction on where to go afterwards. If you’re already a Facebook developer, this book will be a great addition to your book collection, and you should be able to refer back to it often as a reference as you see need.
I imagine with today’s launch of the new Facebook design many may be wondering if the book is already out of date. Actually, I was able to get some of the last minute changes in response to the new design out in just the last 2 weeks, so this book is very up to date – O’Reilly has been wonderful to work with for this project.
Looking to learn how to write software on Facebook? FBML Essentials is a great start – pre-order yours now! Look for me at Facebook’s F8 conference this Wednesday – I’ll be shooting video, qik’ing if possible, and live-blogging where I can. Say hi if you see me around!
I was just writing a post about my new book on Facebook development, FBML Essentials, being released, when I realized Amazon’s problems right now are much bigger than S3. Previously, if I did a search for “Facebook“, an entire list of books would display, including my first book. Currently, it returns nothing. Searching for “I’m on Facebook–Now What???” also returns nothing. At this point, I’m not quite sure what gets returned via search on Amazon.
Amazon is currently losing I’m sure thousands of dollars in sales as their site is having some unknown, perhaps S3-related issue. The problem is, not only are they losing money, but so are the authors and distributors selling through their site. It’s my hope that they get this resolved soon and can get things back in order. Is anyone seeing other things that are down related to this outage?
Update: it appears to be back up again, so the outage seems to be sporadic, perhaps a caching issue?
I’ve been meaning to blog this for a few days now and I want to apologize to our generous sponsors that gave us a place to host the meeting and great food, all at no cost to us for taking so long. We had one of our highest attendance meetings ever for the Utah Social Media Developers Garage last Tuesday, where we watched a great video from the Palo Alto Facebook Developers Garage in May, and then went over the new Facebook Design. There were many great questions, and I think people are more enthusiastic than ever on building Facebook apps. We had near 25 attend, and I only expect that number to grow based on the excitement we saw.
I am always impressed at these meetings, as I seem to meet new Facebook developers working on new Apps each time we have these things. Facebook is truly on the radar for many businesses in Utah – I’m very excited to see what comes out of it!
A special thanks goes to EPIC Ventures and Rachel Strate, who hosted the event – if you are writing a Facebook App and need some investment, give Rachel a ring! Also thanks to Bungee Labs, who at the last minute stepped in to provide Pizza for everyone. I’ve reviewed them before but I do recommend you try them out and see how they can fit into your software development plans if you get a chance. If your business would like to host or provide food for future events, please let me know – it’s a great way to get in front of a group of developers!
These meetings are a true community effort – if you would like to help out or be an officer please let me know and we’ll get you involved in helping me plan the events. Heck, if you think you can do it better I’m open to even letting you take over! These are not my events, but yours, so I want to be sure those attending are able to contribute – if you’re interested in helping please let me know. Also, please let me know if you have an idea for a meeting.
Our next meeting will be September 9 from 7pm to 10pm so add it to your calendars now! My O’Reilly Book, FBML Essentials, will be available then and perhaps we can do a Facebook development focus around that – maybe a launch party of some sort? You can learn more about our group on the group’s official Facebook Group here, or by joining the Google Group here.
Just this past week, Facebook announced that starting next week users will begin to have the option to adopt the new profile design into their Facebook account. Facebook has been preparing this for months, and supposedly was set to try and launch a few months ago. However, even today the new Profile redesign does not seem ready, and it appears developers aren’t happy.
For the past month or two Facebook has enabled access to the new design to those that have the developers app installed in their account via the url http://www.new.facebook.com. This was to enable developers to begin to prepare their applications for when the redesign goes live. The new design change will make significant changes to the way news stories are published to the user’s mini feed in Facebook, allow the developers to move profile boxes to various areas within a user’s profile, and will introduce a new “info” profile integration point for developers as well as an entire tab on the user’s profile that can be devoted to a developer’s application.
For those developers that don’t prepare, application profile boxes will, by default, be placed in a separate tab entitled, “boxes”, away from the main area of the user’s profile. In addition, news stories will no longer be published to a user’s profile in the same way they are now. This introduces concerns for developers that are worried Facebook has not given them enough time to prepare for this change.
Developers have a valid concern too if they don’t think they were given enough time. For instance, it wasn’t until just last week that the example “MySmily” application on Facebook began to work (it had been working before, but it seems for several days it was down, and has been up and down frequently since it was shown to developers). This app is the sample that Facebook provided for developers to learn of the new integration points from. Its functionality has been quite flaky over time, making it difficult for developers to have full access to it to learn how to develop for the new design. In fact, even today installing the latest version of the “MySmily” source code per the documentation returns with an error.
We went over a demo of this application and the new design in our Social Media Developers Garage here in Salt Lake City last night, and we quickly discovered the new design was riddled with cross-browser compatibility issues. I couldn’t do things in Safari that others could do in Firefox, and others running Internet Explorer also were having major issues gaining full access to the new design. Also, ironically, while Facebook recently launched the ability to comment on mini-feed and status items in the old design, the new design is void of this new feature. Add to that on a large screen like my 27″ the site is mostly white space on both sides and really doesn’t look very good, Facebook still has some serious design issues to work out.
In addition, there still remain many mysteries for developers. Facebook has still not made any mention as to where ads can and can’t be placed in the new design. The documentation remains vague – there are many references to passing a variable into a setFBML call to determine where the application’s profile goes, but there are no examples as to how to set that. Also, the Facebook test consoles are also seemingly having issues supporting the new API and FBML tags and calls. Several FBML tags are also not working, including , a popular tag used by many developers (including myself) for displaying a comments box in their application.
The things I mention are only the tip of the iceberg. Many developers are angry that the new design will mean less traffic and user engagement for their applications. Many businesses could be dead overnight from this new design. There are several topics open in the developer forums with developers stating their frustrations with the new design. “distinctdev” says, “Still no solid spec and the new profile launches in 1 week – Whats up with that?”. There is an entire petition set up by developers asking to say “no” to the new Facebook profile. That petition is here, and thus far there are 17 signatures. From that forum post, “Wild Bill”, author of the “Robot Armies” app on Facebook states:
“I wholeheartedly agree with those of you who said the current design should be cleaned up rather than completely changed. I’ve long seen Facebook as one of the finest examples of excellent web design; it’s all very well executed. The new design is definitely a step back; it feels spread out, bloated, and clunky because of the massive amount of JavaScript piled onto it. The old design could be enhanced to correct the problems the platform currently has. I anticipate a very large reduction of activity on my apps, not only because of detrimental changes to the platform, but because of people who are bothered enough by the new design that they no longer use Facebook.
From “friendhugs“, “Nobody will be using the new format for quite awhile. It’s all opt in right now, and I suspect once they find out nothing works, they’ll just flip right back.”. Also see “madpuffin’s” issue here. I could go on and on with more developers having issues and frustrations like this.
Of course, with any new change, there is going to be whiners and complainers and fallout due to the changes – this is a fact of life with any new design. I have seen it plenty of times with redesigns I have done in the past. However, the problems Facebook seems to still have in the new design go way beyond just design issues, and frankly, I think these developers (including myself) have some valid concerns! It will be interesting to see if Facebook can work out all these issues before they launch next week, or if they’re still going to launch, bugs and all.
Those of you in the Facebook Group or Google group have already received notice about this but I just realized I hadn’t blogged about it yet. Tomorrow we have a great Facebook Developers Garage planned here in Salt Lake City. Facebook has sent us a professional copy of the DVD of the Palo Alto Facebook Developers Garage that I was able to attend in May, so we’re going to watch that, and then go over some of the new changes that are coming into play for the new Facebook design.
This should be a great event if your a developer or even non-techie, as it will help you see some of the integration points you can build into with the new design. A lot will be changing with the new Facebook design, so if you are currently, or are planning to build a Facebook application, either as a developer or in a marketing or business position, you’ll definitely want to attend. This is a completely open event so please invite your friends! All I ask is that you RSVP here.
We are still looking for someone that can provide food for the event so if your company would like some great exposure in front of possibly 20-30 developers and Facebook-interested people, please contact me! In the meantime, the event will be hosted at EPIC Ventures in downtown Salt Lake City and they will be providing snacks and drinks for all that attend. I’d like to thank them personally for hosting the event – they are doing this after hosting our food for last month’s event!
All in all, this should be a fun event as all of them are. If for some reason you can’t attend, our next meeting will be September 9th from 7pm to 10pm so put that on your calendar! I’ll look forward to seeing you all there!
Here’s a map to EPIC Ventures – it has been recommended that you park in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building parking lot across the street. I’m told they can provide vouchers for that. Also, if you arrive late a phone number will be posted on the door of the Zions building for Rachel Strate – please call that number and we’ll let you in!:
Epic Ventures
One South Main St, 8th floor
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
Of the buzz that is being generated regarding the upcoming Facebook F8 Conference, one that hasn’t yet been explored is the possibility of an announcement about a new Mobile platform. As of currently, Facebook is on the iPhone, the Blackberry, and just today an app for Windows Mobile was announced. For all others there is still a mobile version of the site that formats Facebook in a nice, easy to view format.
One thing you may not know is that Facebook actually has a special FBML tag for developers to use for the mobile platform (the tag). It ensures certain content will only appear if the user is on a mobile phone. This tag however only seems to work on certain phones, and seems flaky at best. Facebook has also provided an SMS API for apps to be able to send SMS to and from Facebook. As you can tell, there is tremendous potential for a large number of Facebook applications to come forth that utilize these tools.
One thing I noticed at F8 is that there is a particular session specifically devoted to developing Mobile Apps for Facebook. The session is titled, “Made for Mobile”, and per their Facebook Page for the event:
Mobile devices are opening up and creating new opportunities to build Facebook applications that extend beyond the Web. We’ll talk about methods for mobile development and engage in a Q&A on how to get started.
This is the first time I have seen an emphasis by Facebook to developers on their mobile platform since they released development tools for it about 6 months ago. Now, this could just be a re-emphasis to get developers again focused on developing mobile Apps, but I think there could be more to it – I think Facebook could be about to announce an entirely new platform for mobile, further expanding the web-based social network they now operate.
Considering the new iPhone releases this week (on the 11th), and will introduce many more opportunities to integrate with GPS and high speed internet connections (including push notifications!), it would make sense for Facebook to expand their own offering to the mobile phone. Also, according to Dave Morin, Senior Platform Lead for Facebook’s Tweets recently, there is some evidence that mobile has been on his mind, with one about him being at Apple for “some meetings”, another talking about an “EPIC Product breakthrough”, and another recently helping a friend get set up with Twitter on his Blackberry. It should also be noted that Morin used to work at Apple, so I’m sure the iPhone is at the top of his mind when it comes to mobile platforms.
These obviously aren’t “silver bullets”, but I believe there is some merit in Facebook wanting to have a presence on the mobile phone. There are, after all, 3.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide, exceeding over half of the human population, and roughly 10 times that of the world’s internet users. With the new tools the iPhone is providing to pinpoint location, it provides the ideal environment for any social network to pinpoint where their users are and provide thorough, targeted advertising, with push notifications to those users. It also provides an opportunity to get to many of those in remote locations that do not have the opportunity to access a computer due to lack of phone lines. This could be that one path into good monetization Facebook is looking for and you better bet they’re not excluding it from their future.
I strongly feel that the 3 big players in the mobile phone industry in the future are Apple, Google, and Facebook. I really think that F8 will be the place that all starts, and I think that is the big news Facebook is waiting to announce but has yet to reveal.
