Category Archives: Facebook

Facebook buys Instagram for $1 Billion

April 9, 2012 Udit Malhotra Leave a comment

Now we’ve some got some big news as Facebook acquires the famous mobile photo sharing platform Instagram for $1 Billion. The buzz was shared via Facebook Founder and CEO ‘Mark Zuckerberg’ on Monday by a post on his timeline. The company acquisition comprises of a mix of cash and Facebook Shares. It is one of the biggest achievements at Facebook’s end, as Instagram holds a strong threshold for both Apple iOS devices and the Android platform, with millions of users already a part of it.

“For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.” – Mark Zuckerberg (Founder and CEO, Facebook)

Zuckerberg expressed his views on evolving Instagram as an individual application rather than integrating everything to Facebook. “These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.”

The existing set of features to the app that include photo sharing on multiple social networks and the ability to build following while being able follow others would still be in place. It would not be constrained or restricted only towards a ‘Facebook Only Platform’.

The team at Facebook and Instagram would be working together to provide rich experience to its existing set of users, while building Instagram alike features for Facebook services and projects. Lets hope for the best and see what happens.

What are your views on this new acquisition? Please share your views by dropping by a comment.

via Facebook

Facebook

Integrating Facebook Social Plugins to your WordPress Blog [How-to]

November 27, 2011 Udit Malhotra Leave a comment

WordPress is among the worlds best blogging tools, allowing users with a fully customizable environment and an easeful backend interface for content administration and management.

While building a blog or a website on WordPress the user has many options to integrate social features into one’s site which might include leading platforms like Google +, Facebook, Twitter and so on.

We discuss integration of Facebook Social Plugins, which will allow the site to indulge more with its users allowing them to comment, discuss and share what they like in a user-friendly manner. One can come across various plugins available across wordpress.org plugin directory or one can even directly integrate the WordPress Theme as well. Depending on what you find easy you can implement the same.

Facebook Social Plugins

Social Plugins can allow your site users to comment on posts, like and share them on Facebook. The ones that are majorly used include:

Comments
Like Box
Like Button

Facebook Application Creation

To use these plugins we will first require the creating of a Facebook application that would allow cross platform communication between Facebook and our website. To create an application we go to: https://developers.facebook.com/apps. Choose the option on right corner “Create New App”, upon pressing the button a pop-up window appears that allows the creating on a new application.

As shown in the image above we choose a Display Name for the application this can be your Website Name. App Namespace defines how the application would be known internally within Facebook, once done with the creation of the application you will have to adjust some application settings. The user is automatically directed to a summary page for the application. The summary page has various sections out on which will be currently just two of them.

Under basic info section change we change the App Domain value to www.Your-Website.com, going further we tell Facebook as how our application works with Facebook. We do so by highlighting the Option Website and then again entering our website address, once all done we press save changes.

Social Plugin Implementation

From the above plugins lets consider the Comments Plugin to be integrated as a part of your themes code. Go to: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/

When the page opens you will see a box which would be identical to the image above, fill in the required fields include your website address, posts to display and color type you would like and click on Get Code. This generates a code that can be implemented within various pages of your site.

Now we are close to the implementation of the plugin, to finalize the implementation we need to follow a two-step process and we are done.

First we need to implement JavaScript SDK into the theme body tags, body tags can be found both in header.php and footer.php file of your WordPress Themes. The ideal placement area lies just after opening body tag. The JavaScript SDK Code is as below:

window.fbAsyncInit = function() {

FB.init({

appId : ‘YOUR_APP_ID’, // App ID

channelURL : ‘//WWW.YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/channel.html’, // Channel File

status : true, // check login status

cookie : true, // enable cookies to allow the server to access the session

oauth : true, // enable OAuth 2.0

xfbml : true // parse XFBML

});

// Additional initialization code here

};

// Load the SDK Asynchronously

(function(d){

var js, id = ‘facebook-jssdk’; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}

js = d.createElement(‘script’); js.id = id; js.async = true;

js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js”;

d.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0].appendChild(js);

}(document));

</script>

In the above-mentioned code we will replace YOUR_APP_ID with the App ID generated in the comments code, for those of you who not aware of what App ID, check the highlighted part in the code below.

var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];

if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}

js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;

js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=119352884837162“;

fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);

}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));</script>

The second element to be changed from the JavaScript SDK is WWW.YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/channel.html, here we create an html file named as channel.html, and the purpose of creation of this file is to resolve cross-domain communication issue with certain browsers. The code that goes into the file is just one single line, which is described below.

One the file is created upload to the root directory of your webhosting and change the value in the JavaScript SDK.

The Last step to complete the implementation is to edit the comments.php file of your WordPress theme and paste the code mentioned below.

Just replace “YOUR-WEBSITE.COM” by your Website URL and you are done.

Alternatively if you are a newbie and don’t want to code or get confused with the same you can try popular WordPress Plugins Like DISQUS, Intense Debate Etc.

Facebook

Frictionless Sharing : Privacy Compromised

November 27, 2011 Udit Malhotra Leave a comment

Privacy is one thing that everybody is concerned about, the information we share, the activity we do online is completely at the disposal of an individual if one is not careful.

Facebook has brought a host of changes within the layout, the privacy settings and visual appearance within the past six months and is continuing the same. A recent change that I practically saw and implemented was The Timeline Feature.

An enhanced sharing module was also introduced by Facebook known as Frictionless Sharing. Earlier if one needed to Like, Tweet, or Digg anything you needed to push a button to enable safe sharing, but with Frictionless Sharing everything that one practically does from reading, to listening music or watching a video is practically shared over an activity feed or wall without intimation. It also brings focus not only to Facebook as a social media network, but also to various brands as the above said sharing method could be implemented across varied channels.

Considering what one needs to share all major Brands, Firms, and Media Companies should consider whether to integrate the same or not as it can adversely effect a users association with the brand and the brands reputation.

Lets take an example of an application that implements the same, how does your privacy get affected, and how to prevent it from happening. Amidst the new Facebook Applications developed and inclination towards content and media aggregation include Social Reading Applications like Washing Post Social Reader, WSJ and many others. All applications give rich content through various channels but compromise on the privacy for the user.

The image above is a screen shot of my profile, under news section its shows some posts that I read recently as across various reading applications, all the information I read is available to all friends unless I turned the feature off. Although now, few applications have started to give the option to set sharing settings, which earlier was neither asked and one had to manually do the same. If you are a part of the early implementors of social reading applications you can disable sharing by following some simple steps mentioned below.

Login to www.facebook.com
Press the button right next home button on the right corner and choose account settings.
On the next page on the left you will see the option “Apps”
Select the application i.e. The Guardian (Check The Screen Shot Below)

Remove “Add app activity to your timeline” by clicking on the close button on immediate right, also choose can see your posts and activity from the last section. It can be public, friends only or custom depending on your sharing settings.