It seems that not a lot of Facebook apps are taking advantage of all the integration or marketing touch points that the Facebook platform provides. A growing number of applications haven’t been upgraded to take advantage of the new Facebook UI and APIs and many more continue to cling to the “profile-centric widget” model introduced in the first version of the Facebook API. These applications don’t take full advantage of all the communication venues available to them, and other important viral features I mentioned in my blog post on Facebook development best practices. With the growing number of changes to the Facebook API, and new features and services being added services, clients and even developers are simply unaware of all of these integration points

Whe developing a Facebook application you should consider each of the following integration or marketing touch-points:

Content and Information

• Profile Boxes (Main Profile or Boxes Tab)
  • Issues: Requires user action, easy to miss (especially in boxes tab)
  • View (Boxes) | API | Example
• Canvas Pages
  • Issues: Only viewable by application user
  • View | Example
• Application Tab
  • Issues: New feature, easy to miss, can sometimes to hidden
  • View | Example
• Application About Page
  • Issues: Unless your app is listed in the directory, an unlikely entry point
  • Benefits: Supports “marketing material”, you can add other applications to your about page
  • View | Example
• Application Directory
  • Issues: Populated, approvals take time, apps can be rejected
  • Benefits: Allows your application to be found by Facebook users
  • View | Example
• Application Info Section (Info Tab)
  • Issues: Easy to miss
  • Benefits: “Integrated” with profile
  • View | API | Example

Communications and Feeds

• News feeds (mini-feeds) Also See
  • Issues: Has per application limits (10 stories per user per day)
  • Benefits: Highly visible communcation element
  • View | API | Example
• User Status Updates
  • Issues: Requires user permission, may have limits
  • Benefits: Probably most visible user communcations element
  • View | API | Examples
• Notification (user-to-user)
  • Issues: number limited based on a number of metrics, lacks persistence
  • Benefits: can be sent to non-application users
  • View | API | Examples
• Notfication (app-to-user)
  • Issues: number limited based on a number of metrics, lacks persistence
  • Benefits: Highly visible communication
  • View | API | Examples
• Email Notification (using API)
  • Issues: Requires user authorization, limited to 100 users per email, can be irritating to users
  • Benefits: Supports text and HTML
  • View | API | Example
• Email Message (using Proxied Email)
  • Issues: Requires user authorization, limited to 100 users per email, can be irritating to users
  • Benefits: Supports text and HTML
  • View | API | Example
• Application Invitations (user-to-user)
  • Issues: Requires
  • Benefits: Most common way of “sharing” Facebook applications
  • View (Send) | View (Receive) | Examples
• Publisher (user-to-feed)
  • View | Demo | API | Example
• Share Button (user-to-user)
  • Benefits: Does not require poster be application user, good to use on profiles
  • View | FBML | Example
• Share Button (user-to-profile)
  • Benefits: Does not require poster be application user, good to use on profiles
  • View | FBML | Example
• LiveMessage
  • Issues: Currently in beta, may change
  • Benefits: Real-time messaging
  • View | API | Example
    

Mobile Information and Communications

• Mobile Profile Pages
  • Benefits: Available to mobile users
  • View | API | Example
• Mobile Canvas Pages
  • Benefits: Available to mobile users
  • View | API
• SMS Messages
  • Issues: Explicit user opt-in to receive SMS, app has to register ot use SMS
  • Benefits: Available to mobile users
  • View | API

User Actions

• Bookmarking Application
  • Benefits: Button adds your application icon to the user’s toolbar
  • View | Example
• Enabling Profile Box (“Add to Profile”)
  • Benefits: Tags/button puts your content on the user’s profile or boxes tab
  • View | FBML | Example
• Enabling Application Info
  • Benefits: Tags/button puts your content on the user’s profile info tab
  • View | FBML | Example
• Permissioning Application
  • Benefits: Tags/button give you permission to email, update status, create events/classifieds and send SMS to users
    View | API | FBML | Example
• Adding Application Tab
  • Benefits: Tab/Button adds your application as a tab on the user’s profile
• Adding Application to Fan Page (or Application About Page)
  • Benefits: Allows pages to use your application
  • Issues: Complicates application development, adding apps to pages is not intuitive
    View | Example
• Upload Photos to Album
  • Benefits: Show up in newsfeeds, easily accessed by other users
  • View | API | Example

Marketing and Promotional Mechanisms

• Fan Pages Also see
  • Benefits: You can add other applications to your about page
    Example
• Facebook Connect
  • Benefits: Single-sign on, access to friends list, ability to post to status/news feeds
    Example
• Social Ads
  • Benefits: Potentially cost effective and targeted way of promoting your application
  • Issues: Low click-through rates
    Example
• Other Social Networking Ad Networks
  • Issues: May be discontinued by Facebook in the future
    Example
• Placing badgets or link to Facebook on your Website
  • Benefits: Great source of traffic
    Examples (Link) | Example (Button)
• Email Marketing
  • Benefits: Can be effective if you have expertise in this area
  • Cons: Spam filters

The list is almost complete and I am sure I have missed one or two things but hopefully this will keep the advertising agencies busy for a while! I will periodically update this list and have created a home for it on our corporate wiki.

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