What's New on The Facebook Platform, January 2011

What’s New on the Facebook Platform
Iskandar Najmuddin
19th January 2011
Facebook Developer Garage London
Facebook Developer Garage London

Are you sitting comfortably?

What’s New on the FB Platform Jan 2011
Uh-oh, problems with Data Brokers and aggregators.
Sale of UIDs - but no actual user data. UIDs are not private data.
Rapleaf banned from FB platform (forever!)
A handful of developers banned from FB communication channels for 6 months.
The 3rd Party ID is for sharing with 3rd parties like content providers and advertisers so that they can identify uniqueness.
Forced deadline of Jan 31
Available as third_party_idintheGraph API; also as indexable FQL column.
third_party_idis unique to user + application
3rd Party IDs

November 2010 Rollup Migration
Page Graph object: fan_count renamed to likes.
All IDs returned as strings, fixes some JSON-decode casting issues.
likesconnection on the Post object will include both the count and the liking users.
Enabled by default, and forced on for all apps on March 10, 2011
Timezone-less Events
Bug #7210 open since October 2009, resolved in a migration, hooray!
Events can now return UTC start and end times:E.g.2010-03-14T21:00:00+0000
Post for Canvas
Facebook’s solution to refererUID leakage.
Out of beta, enabled by default, forced on on March 10
Migrations

On Jan 31st, farewell to:
DataStore API
SMS API
Custom Tags
metrics FQL table (use insights instead)
Permissions API access methods
FBML - fb:editor, fb:wall, fb:feed (fb:board also doomed)
But pages.blockFanremains.
See http://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/deprecations
Deprecations

Can now change og:type before hitting 10,000 likes
Lots more og:types available
Facebook continues crowd-sourcing an ontology
og:video, og:audiotags now enabled
Only whitelisted for video (FLV) to play in feed
Can specify width/height, and artist/album/title data for audio (MP3)
Tip: Use correct type values for physical objects. If you use article, you won’t have publishing rights and won’t appear on a user’s profile.
OpenGraph changes

Manage Friend Lists
Create and delete lists
Add/remove friends from lists
Needs manage_friendlists permission
Comment connections for ‘likes’
Get list of User names and IDs
Real-time API for pages, permissions
Update your app’s Page data when it changes
If Users remove permissions, update your app to avoid bogus offline API calls.
Graph API updates

Search parameters:
query
centre (as latitude/longitude)
radius (in meters)
Example:
https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=coffee&type=place&center=37.76,122.427&distance=1000
Response:
{"data": [{"name": "Philz Coffee","category": "Local business","location": {"street": "4023 18th St","city": "San Francisco","state": "CA","country": "United States","zip": "94114-2501","latitude": 37.760863,"longitude": -122.433326},"id": "151116474914629"},{"name": "Ritual Coffee Roasters","category": "Local business","location": {"latitude": 37.75659,"longitude": -122.4211},"id": "119185971453428"} ... etc]}
Nearest Places Search

Targeted Post content will only be visible to users matching your targeting.
Via Graph API – use the targetingJSON object:
{"countries": "US","regions": "6,53","locales": "6"}
Country, city, region, and locale data available as CSVs from Facebook.
Needs manage_pages permission
Targeted Page Posts

Create & delete users, create friend connections
Must use the special Application Access token
Max of 100 Test Users per application
Exempt from Facebook spam or fake account detection system
Can’t ‘Like’ pages or post on Page walls
Can use app in live or sandbox mode
Create a user with the app already installed and read_stream permission:
POST /app_id/accounts/test-users?installed=true&permissions=read_stream
Response:
{"id": "1231....","access_token": "1223134...","login_url": "https://www.facebook.com/platform/test_account.."}
Use the login_urlto login as this test user and the access_token for Graph API calls.
Test User API

Connect two test users
Requires two Graph API calls:
POST /uid1/friends/uid2
Using the access_token for uid1
POST /uid2/friends/uid1
Using the access_token for uid2
You can also:
List all of an app’s Test Users (including each login_url)
Delete Test Users
Test User API

Platform Dialogs have been normalised and improved for
Feed, Friend and OAuth methods
Using the JS SDK, FB.ui({ method: “method”, … ]);
Direct URL: http://www.facebook.com/dialog/method/?params
Where method is one of:
feed
friends
oauth
See docs for detailed params: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/dialogs
New Dialogs with FB.ui

Let users sign up to your external website via a Facebook iFrame
Pre-fill user details from Facebook data
Data returned to your site via a signed_request
Registration Plugin

Q1 2011 – iFrame Page Tabs on the way, we are told.
Q1 2011 – No new FBML applications. FBML on Profile Tabs and existing FBML apps continue to work as normal.
Jan 31st – Deprecations forced
Feb 2011 – Old test user accounts ‘retired’
Roadmap

Other new permissions
read_mailbox – read inbox messages.
user_address and user_mobile_phone permissions – but disabled due to outpouring of negative press and user feedback.
And finally
Single-Sign On added to iOSSDK
New list of ad providers that have signed agreements w/ Facebook.
Promotion policies changed – no need for written sign-off from FB.
App requests in notifications area being tested.
Facepile now XBML and iFrameenabled.
Handy new ‘Apps on Facebook.com’ guide for n00bs.
Goodbye, User Profile Tabs. We knew thee well.
Miscellaneous Bits

Thank You
Ask me stuff at the break
Iskandar Najmuddin
Technical Services Director
Syncapse London
i.najmuddin@syncapse.com
twitter.com/iskandar
020 7096 0146

What's New on The Facebook Platform, January 2011

by Iskandar Najmuddin on Jan 20, 2011

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What’s New on The Facebook Platform, January 2011 — Presentation Transcript

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