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)
- Canvas Pages
- Application Tab
- Application About Page
- Application Directory
- Application Info Section (Info Tab)
Communications and Feeds
- News feeds (mini-feeds) Also See
- 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)
- 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)
- Publisher (user-to-feed)
- Share Button (user-to-user)
- Share Button (user-to-profile)
- LiveMessage
Mobile Information and Communications
- Mobile Profile Pages
- 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
- Enabling Profile Box ("Add to Profile")
- Enabling Application Info
- Benefits: Tags/button puts your content on the user's profile info tab
- View | FBML | Example
- Permissioning Application
- 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
Marketing and Promotional Mechanisms
- Fan Pages Also see
- Benefits: You can add other applications to your about page
Example
- Benefits: You can add other applications to your about page
- Facebook Connect
- Benefits: Single-sign on, access to friends list, ability to post to status/news feeds
Example
- Benefits: Single-sign on, access to friends list, ability to post to status/news feeds
- 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
- Issues: May be discontinued by Facebook in the future
- Placing badgets or link to Facebook on your Website
- 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.