Facebook Cookbook - Jay Goldman [18]
Discussion
Five things make up your Application Directory listing (some of which make appearances elsewhere as well), and we’ll examine them through the lens of the Causes application.
Application icon
You have a very, very tiny 16×16 pixel canvas to showcase your masterpiece. This icon will appear in the Applications menu, Message Attachment, and News Feed integration points, as well as in places like the Application Privacy Settings, so you want something distinctive that is going to stand out from the crowd but still represent your app. The Causes app uses a globe with two people in front of it, as shown in Figure 2-7.
It’s really hard to draw something meaningful at this size, so do yourself a favor and find a designer to give your app some professional polish. If you don’t know any, post a message to the Facebook Marketplace offering to trade some development resources for some creative ones, or take a look at sites like ProgrammerMeetDesigner (http://www.programmermeetdesigner.com).
Figure 2-6. PackRat About Page
Figure 2-7. Causes icon
Application logo
You get to upload an image, up to 75×75 pixels, that will represent your application in the Directory listing pages. This is going to be the first impression users have of your baby when they see it listed among the other 1,067 Messaging apps, so get the same designer who made your icon to make the logo (you did get a designer to make the icon, right?). Causes uses a larger version of their app icon, as shown in Figure 2-8, which is a great way to build a brand through consistency.
Figure 2-8. Causes logo
Application description
You’ve just spent days toiling over your new app, and now you have to synthesize all that amazing functionality and mind-blowing cool into 250 measly characters. What to do? Take a look at the leading apps in your category (i.e., your competition) and see what they wrote. Stay away from describing your technological wizardry in favor of the awesome benefits that potential users will receive by installing it. In other words, break free from the tyranny of the Three-Letter Acronyms (TLAs), and avoid mentioning anything that isn’t a real word. Try to use a more active tone (“Play Go Fish! Amaze your friends!”) instead of a passive one (“You can play Go Fish”), since it adds more vibrancy to your message (and often takes up fewer characters). The description for Causes fits that model really well:
Make a difference, on Facebook! Causes on Facebook lets you start and join the causes you care about. Donations to causes can benefit over a million registered 501(c)(3) nonprofits.
This text is also key because Facebook indexes this content for the search function in the Application Directory. You should try to get a bunch of relevant keywords in here so that you app turns up when people are searching for things like it.
Application picture
The picture is displayed on the app’s About Page within the Application Directory. Although size restrictions are not actually listed on the upload page, your image will be scaled down to a maximum of 396×396 pixels, so you’re better off working at that size from the beginning. These pictures are typically screenshots of the application, but feel free to get creative here and do something that really draws people in. And, of course, you don’t need me to tell you to get your trusty designer to make it really shine, right?
Causes deviates slightly from the norm in that their Picture is a screenshot of the Profile Box rather than of the app itself, as shown in Figure 2-9.
Figure 2-9. Causes picture
Application categories
You’ll have the option to choose