How to Leverage the Social Graph with Facebook Platform
by Dave Olsen on Oct 20, 2010
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Facebook is about more than just Pages and Groups. Facebook's set of powerful APIs, Facebook Platform, has made it easier than ever to create engaging social experiences on your own sites. We'll talk a...
Facebook is about more than just Pages and Groups. Facebook's set of powerful APIs, Facebook Platform, has made it easier than ever to create engaging social experiences on your own sites. We'll talk about why you will want to take advantage of Facebook Platform, share an example of using Facebook Platform to drive engagement and give you several strategies for how you can go back to your campus and quickly take advantage of Facebook Platform.
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Alexander Ainslie
So let’s start with the What…
All of these I can be accessed from Facebook Platform via the Graph API but they’re not at the core of Facebook Platform.
Ok, so if they aren’t at the core of facebook platform what is?
It’s all about your website. So you can leverage…
So that’s the sort of high-level philosophy of Facebook Platform. So much so that their documentation even touts what we’re going to be talking about today as Facebook for Websites.
Social Plugins
The first tool is Social Plugins. They are, by far, the easiest Facebook Platform tool to implement. Social plugins require just one line of code. And because they’re implemented via an iframe and are served directly by Facebook, the content is personalized to the viewer whether or not they have signed into your site. So there’s no real work for you beyond copying that one line of code and your site will be connected with Facebook. Examples of social plugins would be the like button or the live stream plugin.
Authentication
The second tool is authentication. Facebook authentication enables your website to interact with the Graph API (aka Facebook data) on behalf of Facebook users, and it does this through a cool single-sign on mechanism. It is the most powerful tool in the Facebook Platform toolbox. It definitely takes a bit more work to implement but I think the pay-off is well worth it.
Graph API
The third tool is the Graph API. Facebook considers this the core of Facebook Platform. This is all the data stored in Facebook and the API enables you to read and write that data to and from Facebook. Basically it provides a simple and consistent view of items in Facebook (like people, photos, events, and pages) and then the connections between those items (like friendships, likes, and photo tags).
Open Graph Protocol
The last tool, and, so far for me, the least useful as far as higher ed is concerned, is the Open Graph protocol. It enables you to integrate your regular web pages into what Facebook terms the social graph. Essentially add some common meta-data tags to your web pages and Facebook can get a better idea of what the content of the page is related to.
I’ll go into more depth on these tools during the How section. For now I want to talk about…
Social Plugins
The first tool is Social Plugins. They are, by far, the easiest Facebook Platform tool to implement. Social plugins require just one line of code. And because they’re implemented via an iframe and are served directly by Facebook, the content is personalized to the viewer whether or not they have signed into your site. So there’s no real work for you beyond copying that one line of code and your site will be connected with Facebook. Examples of social plugins would be the like button or the live stream plugin.
Authentication
The second tool is authentication. Facebook authentication enables your website to interact with the Graph API (aka Facebook data) on behalf of Facebook users, and it does this through a cool single-sign on mechanism. It is the most powerful tool in the Facebook Platform toolbox. It definitely takes a bit more work to implement but I think the pay-off is well worth it.
Graph API
The third tool is the Graph API. Facebook considers this the core of Facebook Platform. This is all the data stored in Facebook and the API enables you to read and write that data to and from Facebook. Basically it provides a simple and consistent view of items in Facebook (like people, photos, events, and pages) and then the connections between those items (like friendships, likes, and photo tags).
Open Graph Protocol
The last tool, and, so far for me, the least useful as far as higher ed is concerned, is the Open Graph protocol. It enables you to integrate your regular web pages into what Facebook terms the social graph. Essentially add some common meta-data tags to your web pages and Facebook can get a better idea of what the content of the page is related to.
I’ll go into more depth on these tools during the How section. For now I want to talk about…
Social Plugins
The first tool is Social Plugins. They are, by far, the easiest Facebook Platform tool to implement. Social plugins require just one line of code. And because they’re implemented via an iframe and are served directly by Facebook, the content is personalized to the viewer whether or not they have signed into your site. So there’s no real work for you beyond copying that one line of code and your site will be connected with Facebook. Examples of social plugins would be the like button or the live stream plugin.
Authentication
The second tool is authentication. Facebook authentication enables your website to interact with the Graph API (aka Facebook data) on behalf of Facebook users, and it does this through a cool single-sign on mechanism. It is the most powerful tool in the Facebook Platform toolbox. It definitely takes a bit more work to implement but I think the pay-off is well worth it.
Graph API
The third tool is the Graph API. Facebook considers this the core of Facebook Platform. This is all the data stored in Facebook and the API enables you to read and write that data to and from Facebook. Basically it provides a simple and consistent view of items in Facebook (like people, photos, events, and pages) and then the connections between those items (like friendships, likes, and photo tags).
Open Graph Protocol
The last tool, and, so far for me, the least useful as far as higher ed is concerned, is the Open Graph protocol. It enables you to integrate your regular web pages into what Facebook terms the social graph. Essentially add some common meta-data tags to your web pages and Facebook can get a better idea of what the content of the page is related to.
I’ll go into more depth on these tools during the How section. For now I want to talk about…
Social Plugins
The first tool is Social Plugins. They are, by far, the easiest Facebook Platform tool to implement. Social plugins require just one line of code. And because they’re implemented via an iframe and are served directly by Facebook, the content is personalized to the viewer whether or not they have signed into your site. So there’s no real work for you beyond copying that one line of code and your site will be connected with Facebook. Examples of social plugins would be the like button or the live stream plugin.
Authentication
The second tool is authentication. Facebook authentication enables your website to interact with the Graph API (aka Facebook data) on behalf of Facebook users, and it does this through a cool single-sign on mechanism. It is the most powerful tool in the Facebook Platform toolbox. It definitely takes a bit more work to implement but I think the pay-off is well worth it.
Graph API
The third tool is the Graph API. Facebook considers this the core of Facebook Platform. This is all the data stored in Facebook and the API enables you to read and write that data to and from Facebook. Basically it provides a simple and consistent view of items in Facebook (like people, photos, events, and pages) and then the connections between those items (like friendships, likes, and photo tags).
Open Graph Protocol
The last tool, and, so far for me, the least useful as far as higher ed is concerned, is the Open Graph protocol. It enables you to integrate your regular web pages into what Facebook terms the social graph. Essentially add some common meta-data tags to your web pages and Facebook can get a better idea of what the content of the page is related to.
I’ll go into more depth on these tools during the How section. For now I want to talk about…
But that mindset misses the real power of Facebook Platform. Because, when it really comes down to it, it isn’t really just this mass of 500 million faceless users floating out in the ether of the internet. Instead Facebook is filled with 500 million…
And these individuals spend some inordinate amount of time telling Facebook all about themselves. Really they’re telling friends and family what they like, what’s going on in their life but Facebook is quietly compiling all this data. And in the end, after they’ve entered in all this data, what they’ve done for themselves is build…
To me, this notion of identity is the first of two core reasons to use Facebook Platform.
A user’s identity on Facebook can be shallow or deep. It can just be basic information like…
This form… just to create an account, to show some level of interest in a school. Remember, we’re talking about prospects here. It’s overwhelming. Almost exhausting. How many people drop out at this point from considering your school?
But let me suggest a different scenario…
The flipside is that you are going to be missing some data as well. Facebook obviously doesn’t have the term that a user is interested in when applying to your school or maybe some other really specific bit of data you want. There’s no reason you couldn’t put up an overlay and ask for that info once the user returns. Keep it short and make sure it’ll add value in the short-term. If you’re not going to customize anything for them based on term don’t ask for it. Is it nice data to have? sure. But you don’t necessarily *need* it. Think about the importance of data before asking for it.
So to quickly review what I think is the first core reason for using Facebook Platform…
Ok, so if identity and then the resulting instant-on social experience is one of the two core reasons to use Facebook platform what’s the second…
And if that person is a prospects then you have a chance to influence 130 other prospects all from a trusted source. So speaking of trusted sources I want to talk about how that works…
I would like to note before starting this explanation, for my examples I’m going to offer some percentages. They are merely illustrative and are not meant to imply that click through rates for Facebook news feed items are this high. So no tweeting that I think there is some crazy high click through rates, ok? And in this example I haven’t received any emails or postcards from you advertising your new prospect site. The idea is that I’m relying on my friends to influence me to do something…
While I said there were two core reasons for using Facebook Platform there is actually a third reason to use Facebook Platform so with that let’s segue into…
There are eight plugins but for the purpose of this talk I’m only going to talk about five of them. The ones I’ll talk about are:
•The Like Button
•The Like Box
•Recommendations
•Activity Feed
•Live Stream
The three I’m leaving out are:
•The login button and Facepile which, to me, seem basically pointless.
And the third is the Comments Box which requires a bit of extra configuration.
Ok, so let’s review each plugin.
Like Boxes should be on your department pages or organizational pages that have related Facebook Pages. There’s no easier way to highlight those Facebook Pages. And if you don’t already have a facebook.institution.edu page get one and put the like box on it.
If the user is logged out, the activity feed will essentially become the recommendations plugin and just show general content from your site, and give the user the option to log in to Facebook.
One interesting use of this plugin could actually be for monitoring things that people recommend from your own domain as a domain can simply be institution.edu.
The last social plugin I’m going to cover, Live Stream, is probably the coolest social plugin. In order to use it though you need to grab a Facebook Application ID. So let’s show you how easy it is to do that…
So what kinds of sites are using social plugins & Facebook Platform?
And an example of one that I’m sure you’re probably very familiar with is CNN. In 2009, CNN and Facebook enabled millions to experience the Inauguration of Barack Obama with their friends directly on CNN.com and set a new record for the largest live video event in Internet history using the Live Stream plugin. And there were 2 million facebook updates based on the event posted from the plugin.
In this screenshot of the CNN home page you can see the Activity Feed social plugin. On individual stories they have the “Like Button”.
So if they’re using it and seeing value in Facebook Platform why not you, right?
And this is actually pretty straightforward process. Facebook has done a great job providing tools and documentation. The first of the tools are SDKs:
•JavaScript
•PHP
•Python
•Android
•iOS
For what it’s worth JavaScript seems to be the preferred SDK. I’ve found the PHP SDK pretty straightforward once I properly understood the example. Another tool is the Facebook specific markup language called…
You can specify the response format for the FQL as either XML or JSON depending on the type of data you want and the type of data you feel comfortable handling. There are 49 tables that you can query including the users status, general users info like we discussed earlier in our prospect example, and you can even query if the user is a fan of your facebook page. The user table alone as 52 bits of data you can play with.