29
Oct
2008
Facebook Connect: Why and how to use it on your website
By Chewie. Posted in Facebook, SEO/SEM, Social Networking |Back in July (when the weather was a little sunny and not bitterly cold) i wrote a blog post about using your Facebook profile on Digg. Just to recap, it was regarding the rather great ability to use your Facebook profile to login to Digg without registering an entire new Digg account, on top of that it also allows Digg to post information back to your wall as a news feed to let all your friends know what you have been Digging.
Well after allowing websites like Digg, and Stumbleupon to use Facebook connect it seems that the big FB are set to allow any website to use Facebook Connect on November the 30th and you should be quickly scurrying to work out how you are going to incorporate it into your site. Here’s why and how…
Firstly. The Why?
There are really three major reasons why you should be using Facebook connect on your website, and i am sure that as the platform progresses, there will become many many more.
- Users can use their existing Facebook profiles to login to your site:
Whilst many people may think that not having users register with you could damage your site, this probably will not be the case at all. I am sure there has been many a time that you or I have come to a website for some information only to find that you have to go through a long registration process to get the information you want. I can certainly say that i have hit the back button and got the info from elsewhere. With Facebook connect your users can simply hit the Facebook login button, find the information they want, and stay on your site. - You get information back about the user:
Amongst other things, Facebook can tell you how many of the user’s friends are already members of your site. You can put a link somewhere that says, “Three of your friends already use the site - invite them to connect.” This can dramatically increase engagement of your existing users by drawing them back to your site. Not only this you can show the friends activity on a page within your site, so that users have yet another reason to return.
Facebook also let you pull certain information about the user such as basic profile info, avatar image etc, this can save you space on your server by hosting everything in a centralised location. - You get to advertise on Facebook for free:
Whenever a user on your site does an action, you can post this information onto their wall. Obviously i don’t need to tell you how valuable this is, as not only does it appear in the news feed it also encourages their friends to click through onto your site and then we are back to point number 1.
Stumble reviews posting back to Facebook
You can see a great example of how Facebook Connect is working on the Facebook Example Site
Secondly. The How?
The first thing to do is go and check out the Facebook Wiki on The Anatomy of a Facebook Connect Site then bring yourself back here, and we’ll go through a few steps incase your still unsure of how to implement it.
Back already? Gee you are a fast reader, ok now take a look at the image below to get an idea about how Facebook Connect works in the background…
So the image above explains how it all works, but how do you put it into your site?
- Download the sample code that is provided by Facebook - This is the code used for their example site and will be a great help.
- The code above will show you all the little neat tricks of Facebook, such as the friends selector, group links, events links, that you can implement to allow users to effectively share your site on Facebook
- You need to go into Facebook and enable the Developers application, if you can’t find it simply do a search for Developers on the Facebook search bar.
- Set up your application using the instructions found in the Facebook wiki
- Insert your application API key into the test code that you downloaded above and visit your demo site. You should now see the Facebook connect login button which will allow you to login using your details.
Finally, just go and read everything on the developers wiki to get yourself up to speed with other features, and then you can start to look to implement the sections of code into your site. Start of by getting the login button working, then by getting some information back from FB about the user. Once you have mastered that you can then get onto the good stuff like writing back to users walls, and allowing them to invite friends to your site.
There is no doubt in my mind that Facebook connect will be a massive step forwarding in bringing around a centralised way of logging into websites and getting meaningful information about your users. From a search marketing perspective you can gain literally hundreds of new visitors a day to your site. If you have a login form then you should be looking at this now.
I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on Facebook Connect, and if you think you will be implementing it on your site.
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About the Author:
Chewie is a guy who moved to London from the North of England to further his career in SEO. He has a background in design, coding, and marketing. He tries to keep this blog up to date as best he can, and talk about a ton of different things.
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October 30th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Great stuff Chewie. I didn’t even know you could do this, but I shall be connecting everything up at the earliest opportunity.
The thing I’d worry about is annoying my actual friends by having all my Digg & Stumble stuff popping up in theirs news feed.
Suppose I could set up a second Facebook account though.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Hi Thomas: Well Facebook posts back to your wall so in theory it would only appear in your friends news feed if it was a real slow news day on Facebook. Obviously status updates, photos, wall comments etc etc all take priority.
October 30th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Note claiming to be the best coder or anything but that code looks pretty simple. Cheers for the tips! Might have just the thing to test it on…
Cheers Dean,
Ben M
October 30th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Ben: Thats the beauty with Facebook, even their application development platform has very simple to understand code. They really have taken api development seriously, and made it super easy for people to use it.
October 30th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Very cool, I count myself in the “I had no idea that was possible” category. I have several clients that would find this interesting, thank you for the great info!
November 5th, 2008 at 6:25 am
There is noting “Open” about “Open” Social. It can only been seen for what it is; a plan by Facebook to continue to raise their revenue and values on backs of other sites content and members.
Developers and content creators of the world, it is time to free yourselves from the share cropping model that is web 2.0.
What will facebook give back to the developer community for their efforts ?
Will face book share a percentage of the value that is created in their company with the developers and content creators that have added the most value.
The value of that content creators and the developers add is something that is measurable. I doubt Microsoft invested close to a billion dollars in face book for their technology.
How does developing for face book or integrating “Open” Social help anyone but facebook ?
Why does developing for face book involve using non standard development methods when there are well known open source standards that could be used ? Because facebook like Microsoft and Google wants to be the standard and they want you to develop for their platform so that you can help them become the standard. I think we have seen this before; and we are still living with the repercussions.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Hi William,
Although i agree with some of your points, i would have to say that as a developer you are getting a lot back from Facebook since you can push content back to Facebook for more people to see.
From a developer stand point, Facebook have been very open and helpful about getting content onto the site and allowing people to create applications which can also generate revenue. The developer wiki is very comprehensive and the forums are also extremely helpful.
Obviously at the end of the day they are in to make money but they are one of the most supportive companies when developing for their product.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:43 am
[...] week a wrote quite a comprehensive post about Facebook Connect and how you can use it on your site. I also showed some quick steps on how you can implement it [...]
December 12th, 2008 at 9:03 am
[...] into my blog over the coming days to see how easy it really is. Remember to check out my post about Facebook Connect: Why and how to use it on your website for in depth information about Facebook Connect and its [...]