Facebook Cookbook - Jay Goldman [24]
Figure 2-31. The Publisher
The “Add Music/Video” and “Causes” items in the screenshot appear because I have the iLike and Causes applications installed in my Profile. Clicking on the down arrow to the right of Causes shows a list of additional apps that offer attachments (from all of the apps I’ve installed), as in Figure 2-32.
Figure 2-32. Publisher attachments
Clicking on your app’s link will bring up a dialog box with FBML inside, which gives your users the opportunity to customize their attachments (simpler apps might just use this box as a preview). iLike implements a fairly sophisticated mechanism, granting users a few different options for what they’d like to attach (Figure 2-33).
Figure 2-33. iLike attachment
Discussion
As with all of the other integration points, remember to make the attachment relevant to both the sender and receiver. The best attachments focus on something the sender is sharing with the receiver (e.g., check out my score on this quiz!) or something they want to give them (e.g., here’s a gift to cheer you up!), and include a clear call to action that will bring the receiver into your app.
Requests
Problem
How can I ask users to come and do something in my app?
Solution and Discussion
It’s easiest to think of requests as Notifications with an action. They carry a little more weight than general invitations into an application because they have a specific call to action associated with them, as shown in Figure 2-34.
Figure 2-34. Disco Nap request
The general idea is that you’re requesting users to take an action in your app based on an action that another user has already taken. Requests tend to have a higher click-through rate than Notifications because they contain an obvious call to action, so carefully consider how you can leverage them.
Tabs
Problem
If my users really like my app, I’d like for them to be able to feature it more prominently on their Profile. Is there anything I can offer them?
Solution
You can give your app the ability to have its own Profile tab, which users can create by clicking on the + symbol tab when they’re viewing their own Profile (Figure 2-35).
Figure 2-35. Add a new tab
Discussion
Your app will get a tab that defaults to roughly the first 15 characters of its name (although users can edit this and override it). Your tab is very similar to a Canvas page in that it has a width of 760 pixels, but different in that it loads in “passive” mode and can’t autoplay any content or JavaScript until it’s activated by a user.
Guiding Principles of App Strategy
Problem
Are there any general principles of Facebook app strategy that I should keep in mind while designing my app?
Solution
The Facebook team has published a set of Guiding Principles that they encourage all Platform developers to follow, grouped into three categories:
Applications should be Meaningful.
Applications should be Trustworthy.
Applications should be Well-Designed.
You should try to follow all of the Principles in your app’s design, particularly if you plan to apply to fbFund for funding. You can find the full list at http://developers.facebook.com/get_started.php?tab=principles.
Discussion
The Facebook Guiding Principles are great, and you should read and practice them, but the full list is a little long. Here’s a short list of things that will almost certainly make your app more successful, each of which includes some questions that you can ask yourself while you’re designing your application, to help you stay focused:
Create value
People use things that add value to their