Here it is, many considered it inevitable after OpenSocial, and Facebook have responded by opening up their own platform. Even though the OpenSocial adopters are sticking with Google for now, I think fbOpen will catch on eventually, at least I find it the easiest platform to develop for.
The fb-open-platform.tar.gz archive contains the tools necessary to implement Facebook Open Platform — including the API, FBML (Facebook Markup Language), FBJS (Facebook JavaScript), and FQL (Facebook Query Language) — in your own environment. It also contains libfbml-1.2.0.tar.gz, which contains the essential libraries for parsing and rendering FBML.
A lot of people have cried out over Facebook’s $15 billion valuation. However, there are certain points that support such a ridiculously high value. Investor Paul Buchheit has written an interesting article about how Facebook has the benefit of knowing about your entire real-life social network, clouded only by a few random online friends here and there, and how they could leverage it.
This comes from padrenel’s blog. It discusses important things to know while getting started with Facebook application development. Must read in my opinion, helped me immensely. It discusses:
Trust me, it doesn’t feel good, but it proves a point, I made a fair game! Yes, the Indian Premier League has begun and so has my application for Facebook. Here’s how I’m doing in the fantasy game:
Monetizing Facebook applications is a difficult job. First, there’s no dominant ad network for Facebook. I’ve started experimenting with AdSense on some pages of my Indian Premier League application. Here are some things I’ve learn so far:
AdSense provides relevant content if the web-page can be crawled. That’s why I built my app in such a way that certain pages can be crawled and others not. There are ways of getting around this such as nesting the ad code in iFrames with dummy text, but that probably borders right on the edge of Google’s TOS. Point is, if your page is open to crawlers, you will get relevant ads.
Selectively use require_login() and require_add(). This comes from the point above. The index.php file on my application uses require_add() so 92% of people using my app have added it. Most of the other pages are open to the web.
AdSense = CPC + CPM. Most Facebook ad networks such as Cubics or Adblade are exclusively CPC or exclusively CPM. AdSense is a combination of both, and the publisher cannot control the ratio in which these ads are shown, so you have to trust Google to deliver. Here are the facts about AdSense’s CPM.
You will get less clicks on Facebook as compared to a website. Most people on Facebook stick on Facebook and aren’t easily interested in going away. Pray to God for more CPM ads.
This comes from an interesting post by Jesse Farmer. There is no clear winner amongst ad networks for social applications on Facebook, MySpace, etc. The only real way to know is to find out for yourself.
Using PHP, you can randomly show ad codes from multiple ad networks with equal probability. Check the cash and find out which works best for you!
function get_random_ad_code() {
$ad_codes = array(
'lookery' => 'Your Lookery ad code',
'adblade' => 'Your AdBlade ad code',
'socialmedia' => 'Your SocialMedia ad code',
'rockyou' => 'Your RockYou ad code'
);
return $ad_codes[array_rand($ad_codes)];
}
echo get_random_ad_code();
If you want to take it to the next level, you can write more complex algorithms to weigh the ads in favor of the network that works best for you, but that’s outside the scope of this article (for now.)
Facebook still has a long way to go! I’ve been optimistic about Facebook’s prospects in India, but at the moment, things do not look so bright. I was doing some market research for my Indian Premier League application, and the possibility of implementing it on Orkut. Here are some findings.
The most popular Facebook group about the IPL has 985 members right now. The coresponding group on Orkut has 37,096 members
I guess people are sticking to Orkut because despite all the trouble, it does the job for them. It seems like I’ll have to be the one who has to move over. Reality bites. Ouch!
Facebook has launched its instant messaging product. However, my personal preference is to keep it disabled. I think integration with friends’ lists is important, as usually people add so many friends on facebook as it is impossible to communicate with all of them simeltanously. Most of my friends have disabled the feature. I think the lacking ingredient is prioritization.
