Gaming Facebook. This is on a whole new level

silentbob said:
On my site having the old share button and an xfbml like button did not work. For some reason the like button did not work. But using a xfbml like button also gives users the ability to add custom text and facebook adds a description to the wall post so it is basically like a share button.

Anyways ... just implemented the like button. What has been your experience with it?

(quick note: on www.facebook.com/insights you can add your site so you get stats on # of likes etc. but that data is probably delayed a couple of days. so no stats for me just yet)
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Hey thanks silentbob. Good call on insights

I've had an old-school share button up all day now - it's a site-wide link. Not a single bite after about 1500 unique visitors.

I'll keep this up, but I'm going to look into your stuff for an advanced LIKE button. One-click experience will make it wayyy easier. Even if I don't get my thumbnail onto the feed (which would give higher CTR), at least I'll get more people spreading the word!

I'm leavin the share button for another day though, just in case.

Next test will be to create a random function to 50% rotate Like vs. Share and split test em.
 


ayzo said:
Cliffs:

Facebook's new API sends out all your profile info (friends and email included) whenever you connect to external sites.

They now also have a "like" button for the entire web.

Marketers could setup an "incentive" site that requires visitors to connect and "like" their site before they are able to access premium content.

Doing so would give you the person's email which you could then spam to death and it will give you viral traffic because their friends will see a link that says "John likes Gay Webmaster Forum"

If you want to see it in action and download a plugin that does such things then click here:

Facebook Wordpress Plugin 3.0 | Sociable! - The Social Media Blog
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I just came in my pants...Bwuuuuggghuhhhhh...mmmmm

noyphh.jpg
 
I added the like button to all of my blogs on the Blogger platform and have been impressed with how it all works. The problem is that all of my blogs are all product-type sites so doubt I will see much benefit, but you never know. If you have a celebrity blog then I'm pretty sure you could get some serious traffic from this, as you could from any kind of link baiting-type content.

silentbob said:
(quick note: on www.facebook.com/insights you can add your site so you get stats on # of likes etc. but that data is probably delayed a couple of days. so no stats for me just yet)
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Thanks for that info, had no idea that you could check up on this data. I have also added a "like" button to my adult blog and wondered if I should add the insights there? Don't wanna get my account took down (again).
 
Berto said:
Next test will be to create a random function to 50% rotate Like vs. Share and split test em.
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Let us know how that goes.

So its not possible to hide content without making the user connect to the app? If I just want them to join my fanpage and then be able to submit a video on my site, that wouldnt work?
 
Berto said:
Even if I don't get my thumbnail onto the feed (which would give higher CTR), at least I'll get more people spreading the word!
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You can get an image onto the feed using the og:image meta tag on the page where the like button is on. Just check the open graph protocol doc page. Even if you do not supply it and a user likes your page AND types in a custom message then facebook will still pick an image and show it in the feed. It might not be the most appropriate picture though.
 
I'd be willing to work with one of you guys to figure out the more complex side of this thing. I haven't done it yet, but most likely could if I had a project to work on. Have built fb applications in the past so it shouldn't be that difficult.

PM me if you'd like to give it a shot.
 
nathanjacobs said:
I'd be willing to work with one of you guys to figure out the more complex side of this thing. I haven't done it yet, but most likely could if I had a project to work on. Have built fb applications in the past so it shouldn't be that difficult.

PM me if you'd like to give it a shot.
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Hey, tried to add u on AIM. shoot me a pm when ya get a chance.
 
unrealalex said:
Let us know how that goes.

So its not possible to hide content without making the user connect to the app? If I just want them to join my fanpage and then be able to submit a video on my site, that wouldnt work?
Click to expand...

Well, nobody is sharing my site, so split testing this is useless... it can't get any worse than 0/3000 visitors or so :)

silentbob said:
You can get an image onto the feed using the og:image meta tag on the page where the like button is on. Just check the open graph protocol doc page. Even if you do not supply it and a user likes your page AND types in a custom message then facebook will still pick an image and show it in the feed. It might not be the most appropriate picture though.
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Thanks. Will hack away at this tomorrow morning for that site. The meta tags are easy to add.

There's one where you suggest the image too -- put this in the HEAD:
<link rel="image_src" href="http://www.domain.com/suggested_pic.jpg"/>That will make it so that when they go to share you (and hopefully like you), it's the only option for a thumbnail. Force a good one!

I'm working on a new site where I'm not going to try hiding some content if they're not connected. Deadline is about three weeks, so I'll let people know of my experiences. Will be a lot of PHP on this project.
 
unrealalex said:
thats messed up lol
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Since due to the number of PM's I got when I said I was working on it there are a number of you working really hard figuring this out -- I'm sure there is at least one person that will hit their desk hard enough to hurt when they see how f'n easy it really is.
 
stmadeveloper said:
A lot of you are going to be cranky when you figure out how easy it is to hide content unless they approved your app and liked your site.

Facebook Force Log in – gather data – get liked! | Black Hat SEO Digest
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Wow this is already getting annoying. This facebook stuff will be great for us marketers who can harness it, but I'm already annoyed as a user trying to get information without giving away mine (i just use my dummy test account for these jerks)

Anyway, so the rest of you don't need to go through that:
You made it Let’s talk about what’s happening with this plugin first. When you log into facebook and come back the sociable plugin actually gets some data from facebook and creates (and logs in) a user that is you. Basically you are a subscriber inside wordpress now.

The better news is that I’m now able to use fun functions inside wordpress to only show content to you if you are logged in.

You also need to install the exec php plugin for this to work. Install and activate it – then you can include php code inside your posts.

The code is going to look like this:

<?php if (is_user_logged_in() ) { //only logged in WP user can see this ?>

<div><p>I’m the secret words, html, images, etc… that you only want logged in people to see!</p></div>

<?php } ?>

Might be easier for those of you who aren’t skilled with the html to just put all the content (what everyone sees and the private stuff) on your post in design view – then move over to html view and add this above the content you want to hide:

<?php if (is_user_logged_in() ) { //only logged in WP user can see this ?>

<div><p>

and this below the content you want to hide:

</div>

<?php } ?>

That’s it kids – nothing to complicated here. I even set it up so you can use ‘, and ” inside your content and not have to escape it.
Click to expand...
 
And FWIW, why did everyone think this was so hard? That's the first thing I would have tried...

Next challenge is then detecting the search engines and showing them the content but nobody else unless they're logged in, if you so wish.
 
Usually when people help each other out with simple info it comes with no strings attached. If everytime someone posted useful info he had us opt in it wouldn't be much of a forum.

Anyway lets not get off topic. Is it possible to have them click Like to join the fan page and then be able to see the content if I just want my fanpage to grow and dont care for the app?
 
unrealalex said:
Usually when people help each other out with simple info it comes with no strings attached. If everytime someone posted useful info he had us opt in it wouldn't be much of a forum.

Anyway lets not get off topic. Is it possible to have them click Like to join the fan page and then be able to see the content if I just want my fanpage to grow and dont care for the app?
Click to expand...

Personally don't care if there are opt ins / likes -- it's just how I made the page as an example. If it was so flippin obvious to him he could have just helped out when all those folks were trying to figure it out.

Anyway don't need a drama fest - don't really give a crap and my e-penis is tired tonight.

The fb visible to connection should work but it doesn't seem to work for most people... I suspect it's not supposed to be used on external pages and it's only for apps. It's also pretty limited what you can put in there - almost no html code.

In theory this should work:


<fb:fbml version="1.1">
<fb:visible-to-connection>
Fans will see this content.
<fb:else>Non-fans will see this content.</fb:else>
</fb:visible-to-connection>
</fb:fbml>

It seems hit or miss..... more miss.

The only reason what I was doing works is because they are "joining" your app and getting permission to grab some data from their profile and you are using that to (through the plugin) to make a user on your blog.

You could probably do a on-click action and set a cookie though.... someone smarter than me is going ot have to figure that out though - it's late.
 
This isn't testing whether the visitor is a fan or has liked anything, only that they have connected to your app. This puts nothing on their wall and does not increase the social value of your content.

I can only think of three ways to require someone to like/share your content for access to private content.

All of them require the user to first connect to your site so you can retrieve their Facebook user_id, otherwise you'll have no idea who you're dealing with and whether they like anything.

For Facebook Connect, so far I am preferring the WP-FBConnect plugin which I believe is semi-official and created by a Facebook dev: hxxp://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/WP-FBConnect

Now to check if a visitor likes your shit:

1. Check if logged in user is a FAN of your Facebook page (not your website)

It's possible to look and see if a user is a fan of your real Facebook-hosted page. This is how the sociable.es plugin works as far as I can tell.

1. Facebook Connect --> page auto-refreshes -->
2. "You must be a fan of our Facebook page to see this content, click below to Like and then refresh" -->
3. Do a look via Facebook Query Language (FQL) with this fbuid + your Facebook fan_page_id to check if this logged in user really is a fan, if so --> show content, else show #2 again.

Advantages of this are that a) it is currently the only working approach I've seen and b) you get a bunch of fans of a real page on Facebook that you can interact with on Facebook without an additional optin or breaking TOS and trying to email people directly.

2. Check if the logged in user LIKES an external Open Graph web page

The user experience for this is better:
1. Facebook Connect --> page auto-refreshes -->
2. "You must be a fan of our website to see this content, click our Like button right here and then refresh to see your content" (its possibly you could come up with some fancy jquery here that would detect a click in the Like iframe and auto-refresh for them which would be even cooler) --> user clicks like and refreshes page -->
3. Use Facebook Query Language to check if this user likes this page, if so show the content, otherwise show 2

The huge problem with this approach is hurrr it's not currently supported durr. But according to the Facebook devs it is coming, hopefully soon.

The advantage of going this route is that, well I have a feeling that social likes are going to be the backlinks of the near future. But at this point I'm not seeing a whole lot of obvious value to getting tons of likes to an external web page. Does Facebook show a thumbnail for high social value sites like this in any kind of suggested area?

3. Check if the logged in user has shared your Open Graph web page on their wall recently

I have yet to test this approach, I just thought of it last night actually.

1. Facebook Connect --> page auto-refreshes -->
2. "Please share this page with your friends to get access to special content, then hit refresh" --> embed a shared button (or at the very least the XFBML version of the Like button which allows them to make a comment, otherwise I don't think just a "Like" of an external web page will be visible in their stream, it's the same problem in 2nd approach above) -->
3. Using Facebook Query Language you can lookup recent posts on a person's wall. So theoretically you could grab these and look for your link. If you see your link then show them the content. (You're also going to have to add meta data to this Wordpress user that they have been approved to see private content because eventually your link will drop out of their recent posts. Maybe check for 7 days then approve them permantly to prevent gaming).

All in all it seems like method #1 is the best for the time being, until Facebook starts 1) promoting Open Graph pages with many likes and 2) actually support FQL lookups for whether users have liked Open Graph web pages.

Sean
 
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