Facebook Connect - MITX Panel Notes

This morning I attended a short event put on by MITX in downtown Boston. It was a panel discussion covering Facebook Connect featuring Dan Abdinoor of Hubspot, Leah Busque of RunMyErrand.com, Meagan Ellis of Kel and Partners, Justin Levy of New Marketing Labs and John J. Maver, Jr. of Thought Labs. For the most part this was a non-technical discussion about Facebook Connect as it was a panel of that ranged from public relations to development to entrepreneurs. It tended to cover the "why' of Facebook Connect rather than the "how." Below are some items I found interesting or at least worth noting from the session. (these are actually the notes I sent my coworkers) If you are already familiar with Facebook Connect this will probably be nothing new to you, but if you are thinking about looking into it, this information could be useful.

Essentially, Facebook Connect is the API external sites and services to connect to Facebook's data and services as opposed to a Facebook application which resides inside the confines of Facebook. Part of Facebook Connect essentially functions as a single-sign-on service much like OpenID or Google Accounts but much of the benefit comes from access to the user's shared friends, feed and data. Authentication happens on the Facebook side via a popup window where the user gives the site permission to connect with their Facebook account, though permissions by default are still limited. Single sign on is universal, so a user does not need to sign in for one Facebook connected site and then re-sign in on another (assuming its already been connected). Beyond using the full Facebook Connect API for authentication, they mentioned that you can also leverage Facebook for connected comments on blogs that will automatically post to the user's status stream with a link back to the post.

One example of a site using the full API for extended user data and written by one of the panel members is Facebook Grader (http://facebook.grader.com/) which aggregates your fan page or user data to give you a rank/score. Leah Busque, who founded RunMyErrand.com, also displayed their Facebook integrated login. The Facebook Connect library is available in both JavaScript and for iPhone.

By default, you do not have access to the user's email address, so if you need it you will either have to collect it yourself or request special permissions. They recommended gradually getting the user to give you the data you need only when you need it because making a multi-step registration tacked on to Facebook Connect tends to hurt the "quick and easy" nature of it and hurt registrations. It is also important to note that Facebook does not let you store any identification data other than the ID on your end; however, they will allow you to cache data for up to 24 hours for performance purposes. Several panel members noted that the email policy is apparently going to change "soon" though the specifics of how are unknown.

Some other challenges they noted other than not being able to store identifying data include managing states (as in, whether the user is still logged in to Facebook vs. your site and so on). They also noted that the policies and API tend to change frequently, so it can be a challenge keeping pace. They recommended applying for the FBFund incubator if you plan on making Facebook integration a big part of your site as well as looking into the Faebook Developer Garage for resources.