ClearSpring Facebook Support: Quick and Easy FB Apps?

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It seems everyone wants a quick and easy way to get their content or widgets on Facebook and other social networks, so naturally people sometimes assume that widget distribution engines like Clearspring and Gigya automatically get your content to these sites - this is usually not the case.  Here are a couple of things to keep in mind about the limitations of using ClearSpring to "share" widgets on Facebook:

  • The Facebook link in the ClearSpring sharing menu does not by default publish your widget as a application on Facebook (see below). This "Post to My Feed" feature is very lacking!
  • The only way to get a Flash Widget onto Facebook is to wrap your widget in a Facebook application. You can develop (or have someone develop) that from scratch or if you already have a ClearSpring widget, you can try using the ClearSpring wizard to publish your widget (but it has its limitations)
  • Widgets ported using the ClearSpring wizard cannot be customized, so there are is no way to remedy some of the limitations (limited news feed support for example)

ClearSpring Facebook Publishing Illustrated:

Clearspring_facebook_3
Getting Your Widget on Facebook: Alternative Approaches
Facebook is a lot more than a "widget platform".  In fact, unlike MySpace, Facebook doesn't really lend itself well to supporting widgets of any kind (even Flash-based widgets). The best and most effective approach to "porting your widget" to Facebook is really to rebuild it as a Facebook application.

Alternatively, you can port your widget (both Flash and Javascript) by building a simple Facebook application around it that embeds your widget in an IFRAME (more info..). By building it yourself (or having us build it for you), you have a lot more control over user interaction, publishing information to user's news feeds, email and other notifications as well as what actually appears on the user's profile or boxes tab.

With the new user interface changes on Facebook, sticking Flash-content in a user's Boxes tab isn't very viral, and chances, few visitors will ever see it. Tommorrow I will spend some time discussing how to build Facebook applications that more effectively leverage the New Facebook user interface.