facebook

1. Auto-Update with a Facebook Application

If you’re looking to automatically post your Twitter updates straight to Facebook, the Twitter application (by Twitter) is your best bet. It’s pretty darn simple to use as well: just install the application and then click to allow Twitter to update your Facebook status. The Tweeterapp is of the same variety and includes a few additional features related to viewing and engaging with tweets while using Facebook, though there are some known issues.

Those of us who are loquacious Twitterers might opt instead for the Selective Twitter Status application, which will only update your wall with tweets that include the #fb hashtag. TweetSync provides a similar function, though it’s keyword based, and also includes an option to sync all your tweets unless a particular keyword is included in a tweet.

Facebook Page admins have a few additional options. One such option is Involver, which is actually a suite of Facebook applications for Pages. The Twitter for Pages app essentially just adds a Twitter tab with a collection of tweets to a Facebook Page. It’s a nice alternative for brands and companies who want to showcase their Twitter presence without over-updating their Page’s wall with an influx of tweets.

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Or if you want to be a bit selective on the posting you want to carry over to FB, you may want to use Selective Tweets instead. I myself like this one, by the way. (apps.facebook.com)

On the other hand, to get the posting from FB to Twitter, I use that recommended at: www.facebook.com that is http://www.facebook.com/twitter to achieve my goal. However, please do note that twitter has the limitation of 140 characters maximum to be posted as a tweet. 🙂

by Michael Gummelt on Friday, August 21, 2009 at 8:34am

Many people have asked us to make Facebook and Twitter work better together for those times when they want to share their content as widely as possible. We agree. Over the next few days, we will be releasing a feature that allows administrators of Facebook Pages to publish their Facebook updates to their Twitter accounts automatically. This will only link Facebook Pages to Twitter, not your individual profile.Public figures, musicians, businesses and organizations of all types who’ve created Facebook Pages often want to share a status update, a photo or an event with as many of their supporters as possible. Celebrities may want to share personal news or charities may want to put out calls for help to both their Facebook fans and their Twitter followers, all at the same time.

If you manage a Facebook Page, you now will be able to decide whether to share updates with their Twitter followers, and you also will be able to control what type of updates to share: status updates, links, photos, notes, events or all of them. If you have multiple Pages, you will have the option to link each of those Pages to different Twitter accounts. This new feature will soon be available at http://www.facebook.com/twitter.

A number of celebrities and organizations on Facebook are already using this feature to publish the content on their Facebook Page to Twitter and reach a wider audience. They include Dane Cook, LIVESTRONG, The World Wildlife Fund, and the NBA, WNBA and D-League.

We are always looking to make it easy for you to use Facebook with your favorite websites and applications. Facebook Connect allows you to bring your Facebook profile with you across the Web. We recently worked with Yahoo to integrate your Facebook experience into Yahoo’s new homepage; we’ve built our own Firefox and iPhone applications in-house; and we built tools to help you bring your content from YouTube, Hulu and other sites into your Facebook profile.

Twitter was a natural next step to link with Facebook Pages because it is a powerful tool for broadcasting short messages widely.

I was able to build this new feature from start to finish as a summer engineering intern. Next month I’ll head back to school, but I’m excited to see my work here live on through all of the people who now will both share on Facebook and tweet on Twitter right from their Facebook Pages.

Let us know if there are other websites you’d like to work better with Facebook. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to build it when I return next summer.

Michael is getting ready to return to Stanford University for his junior year.

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Thanks!

Writing F8 apps is where it’s at right now. Everybody knows it. The userbase is huge and now we have a (free) API to. Everything is good….but the documentation.

I spent a day writing my Sudoku Facebook application yesterday. I already had the sudoku javascript widget ready to go – the time was spent wading through pages of documentation and downloading toolkits that (as it turns out) I didn’t need.

As far as I can tell, Facebook allows you to create applications that appear to the user in 2 different areas.

1 – The profile. This the ‘main user page’ as far as Facebook is concerned. Here is where your main summary details are displayed and your comments wall. It would be great to have your widget displayed here, but the big limitation is that applications that use javascript are not allowed here (You must use FMBL, the facebook version of HTML). Too bad for me. What we can do is display a small ad to take the user to the Canvas page.

2 – The ‘Canvas page’. This is an entire page that your application gets to use (you can have multiple pages if you want). On these pages you can choose to display content from another website through an iframe, so that is what we’re going to do.

Ok, thats it for the overview. Start your clocks and lets get cracking.

1. Create your demo page. (2 minutes)
This is the page that the user will see on their canvas page. If you already have a page that you want to use, great. If not, then just copy this code for a guessing game.


<script type=text/javascript>
var iRandom;
function Restart()
{
iRandom = Math.floor(Math.random()*10)+1;
alert('OK, I am thinking of a number between 1 and 10');
}
function Guess()
{
var yourGuess = document.getElementById('myGuess').value;
if (yourGuess>iRandom)
	alert('Too High.');
if (yourGuess<iRandom)
	alert('Too Low.');
if (yourGuess==iRandom)
	{
	alert('Well done! You guessed it.');
	Restart();
	}
}
</script>
<div>Enter your guess between 1 and 10: <input type=text id='myGuess' name='myGuess'>
<input type='button' onClick='Guess()' value='Guess'>
<br>
<br>
<input type='button' onClick='Restart()' value='Start Again'>
<script type=text/javascript>
Restart();
</script>

It’s not going to win any awards, but it gets the job done. Save the file somewhere on your website as ‘guess.htm’. Mine is saved at http://gathadams.com/guess.htm

Ok, now log into Facebook.

2. Install the Developer Application. (1 minute)
http://developers.facebook.com/get_started.php
This allows you to create applications.

3. Create the Application. (30 seconds)
Click the ‘create application’ link
4. Fill in the Application details. (6 minutes)
There are heaps of fields you can enter, I am just going over the ones you need to get this demo working.

Application Name: Any name you want. I used ‘Guessing Game’.
Terms of Service checkbox: Check it.
Click ‘Optional Fields’.
Callback Url: This should be the root directory that your ‘guess.htm’ page is found at. You must also add a ‘/’ at the end. I used ‘http://gathadams.com/’.
Canvas Page URL: This is the most confusing part, and wasted me heaps of time. What they want you to enter is basically a directory name for your applcaition. The name must be 7 characters or more, and must be unique from other Facebook applications. I used ‘guessab’ (so you can’t). When you add ‘http://apps.facebook.com/’ to the front you have the Canvas page URL.
NOTE: If you use upper case in the Canvas Page URL, it will be converted to lower case automatically. Also, case is important, so if you use upper case in your links later on THEY WON’T WORK.
Tick ‘Use iframe’: This means that your canvas pages will use an iframe.
Application Type: Leave it at ‘website’.
Can your application be added on Facebook?: Tick ‘Yes’.
Application Description: I used ‘Cool guessing game’. If you disagree, feel free to use your own description.
Default FMBL: We will fill this out last, so leave it for the moment.
Default Profile Box Column: Tick ‘Narrow’.
Side Nav URL:OK, here is where we put a link in the side nav to the canvas page.
The full canvas page has the format:
http://apps.facebook.com/< value entered in Canvas Page URL>/
So for me, the full canvas page URL is:
http://apps.facebook.com/guessab/guess.htm
Facebook maps ‘http://apps.facebook.com/guessV1/’ to your Callback URL, so what is loaded in the iframe is:
guess.htm
or
http://gathadams.com/guess.htm
Note: Notice there is no ‘/’ inserted in guess.htm, that is why you have to put it in your Callback URL.

Anyway, now we can go back to
Default FMBL: This is the text that will go on the user’s profile. Lets just put another link to our game on the Canvas page. I entered:
Lets play a <a href=’http://apps.facebook.com/guessab/guess.htm’>Guessing Game</a>

5. Add the application (30 seconds)
From within ‘My Applications’, click on ‘View About Page’ for your new application. Then click ‘Add Application’, and confirm this.

6. Done! (Lets play)

Click on the link in either the left nav panel or the main profile panel and knock yourself out.

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quoted from: gathadams.com