Monday, 29 July 2013

Techlightenment's systems architect Chas Coppard gives us a rundown of the APIs and plug-ins available to connect your site to Facebook

Techlightenment's systems architect Chas Coppard gives us a rundown of the APIs and plug-ins available to connect your site to Facebook

 The Facebook Developer Platform is a collection of APIs and plug-ins that enable Facebook users to log in to your site using their Facebook identity. Techlightenment uses these tools to create engaging social user experiences on many of the apps and websites that we build for the world’s leading brands.


Once logged in, users can connect with their friends and interact with their Facebook profile through your site, and you will be able to connect with your users and access their social graph. The Developer Platform is comprised of the following components:

    •    Authentication (Login, Registration)
    •    Social Plugins (Like Button, Send Button, Activity Feed, Recommendations, Comments, Live Stream, Facepile)
    •    Facebook Dialogs (Feed, Friends, OAuth, Pay, Requests)
    •    Graph API
    •    Real-time Updates

In this tutorial we’ll build a web page containing many of these components. The focus will mostly be on client-side code using eXtensible Facebook Markup Language (XFBML), although some server-side code will also be covered.

Create the app

To start, register a new Facebook app here and note down the App ID and Secret Key. Be aware that certain Facebook plug-ins such as the Like button require that your site be reachable by Facebook, so you’ll need to host your test page on a publicly accessible server.

Next, create a page including the code to load the JavaScript SDK as shown below. Replace [APP_ID] with your App ID:
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  1. <!DOCTYPE html>
  2. <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml">
  3.   <head>
  4.     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
  5.     <title>Facebook Developer Plaform Example</title>
  6.   </head>
  7.   <body>
  8.     <div id="fb-root"></div>
  9.     <script>
  10.       window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
  11.         FB.init({appId: '[APP_ID]', status: true, cookie: true, xfbml: true});
  12.       };
  13.       (function() {
  14.         var e = document.createElement('script');
  15.         e.type = 'text/javascript';
  16.         e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/all.js';
  17.         e.async = true;
  18.         document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e);
  19.       }());
  20.     </script>
  21.     <script>
  22.       function trace(message) {
  23.           var div = document.getElementById('trace');
  24.           div.innerHTML = div.innerHTML + message + '<br/>';
  25.       }
  26.     </script>
  27.  
  28.     <p><div id="trace" style="font-size:8pt; height:200px; width:500px; overflow:scroll;"></div></p>
  29.   </body>
  30. </html>
Note the fbml schema attribute in the html tag and the script block, which asynchronously loads and initialises the Facebook JavaScript SDK. The fb-root element will contain the script include after this code has executed. Once the script has loaded it will parse any XFBML tags on your page and render them into HTML.

We’ve also added a trace function and a div so we can monitor events.

Login plug-in

The Facebook log-in plug-in allows users to connect to your site using their Facebook credentials. Techlightenment has seen the Login button being much more popular with users than standard registration forms and increases the rate of registration on a site or app. The simplest way to do this is to use the fb:login-button tag:
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  1. <fb:login-button autologoutlink="true" perms="email,user_birthday,status_update,publish_stream"></fb:login-button>
You can use the perms attribute to request extended permissions from your users, giving you greater access to their social graph, but be aware that the more permissions you request, the less likely your users are to grant them. A full list of permissions is available here.

You can customise the look and feel of the login button through its various attributes, but if you want complete control then you’ll need to create your own custom button and call the API’s FB.login (and FB.logout) functions when it is clicked:
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  1. <input type="button" id="login_button" onclick=&rdquo;login&rdquo; value="Login"/>
  2. <script>
  3.   function login() {
  4.     FB.login(function(response) {}, {perms:'read_stream,publish_stream'});
  5.   }
  6.  
  7.   function logout() {
  8.     FB.logout(function(response) {});
  9.   }
  10. </script>
Notice the perms are passed to the FB.login method as a JSON dict. We’ve left the response handlers for the FB.login and FB.logout methods empty because we’re going to handle these by subscribing to the auth-login and auth-logout events. This will ensure we receive these notifications from our custom login button as well as any other XFBML components that may invoke a login, such as the Registration plug-in.
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  1. <script>
  2.   FB.Event.subscribe('auth.login', function(response) {
  3.     loggedIn(response.session);
  4.   });
  5.        
  6.   FB.Event.subscribe('auth.logout', function(response) {
  7.     loggedOut();
  8.   });
  9.  
  10.   function loggedIn(session) {
  11.     var btn = document.getElementById('login_button');
  12.     btn.disabled = false;
  13.     btn.value = 'Logout';
  14.     btn.onclick = logout;
  15.   }
  16.  
  17.   function loggedOut() {
  18.     var btn = document.getElementById('login_button');
  19.     btn.disabled = false;
  20.     btn.value = 'Login';
  21.     btn.onclick = login;
  22.   }
  23. </script>
In the handler methods I have added code to change our custom login button to a logout button and vice-versa. Later we will add more code to these handlers to perform various actions after login and logout.

Registration plug-in

The Facebook Registration plug-in enables users to sign up for your site with their Facebook account. If a user is logged into Facebook when they visit your site then the registration form will be pre-filled with their details. The form can be customised to allow extra fields to be included for data that is not present on Facebook. The form can even be used by non-Facebook users, thus providing a consistent experience for all users.

Let’s add a customised registration form to our page:
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  1. <fb:registration redirect-uri="[YOUR_SITE_URL]/submit.php"
  2.     fields='[{"name":"name"},
  3.             {"name":"birthday"},
  4.             {"name":"gender"},
  5.             {"name":"location"},
  6.             {"name":"email"},
  7.             {"name":"password", "view":"not_prefilled"},
  8.             {"name":"quote","description":"Favourite quote","type":"text"},
  9.             {"name":"colour","description":"Favourite colour","type":"select","options":
  10.               {"blue":"Blue","green":"Green","puce":"Puce"}},
  11.             {"name":"agree_tcs","description":"Agree to T&Cs","type":"checkbox"},
  12.             {"name":"anniversary","description":"Anniversary","type":"date"},
  13.             {"name":"favourite_city","description":"Favourite city","type":"typeahead","categories": ["city"]},
  14.               {"name":"captcha"}]'
  15.     onvalidate="validate">
  16. </fb:registration>
  17.  
  18. <script>
  19.   function validate(form) {
  20.     errors = {};
  21.     if (form.quote == "") {
  22.       errors.quote = "You didn't enter a favourite quote";
  23.    }
  24.    if (form.colour == "") {
  25.       errors.colour = "Pick choose your favourite colour";
  26.    }
  27.    if (!form.agree_tcs) {
  28.       errors.agree_tcs = "You have not agreed to the T&Cs";
  29.    }
  30.    return errors;
  31. }
  32. </script>
The registration plug-in has following attributes:
http://media.netmagazine.futurecdn.net/files/images/2011/05/table1.jpg
The fields attribute is either a comma-separated list of Facebook fields (called named fields) or a JSON-formatted string of both named fields and custom fields. The available named fields are listed here. As well as standard Facebook fields they include a captcha field for bot detection and a password field. Note the "view":"not_prefilled", attribute we have added to the password field. This will prevent the password field being displayed if we are logged into Facebook. Adding “view”:”prefilled” to a field will do the opposite.

The custom fields each consist of a dictionary with name, description and type fields. Supported custom types are:
http://media.netmagazine.futurecdn.net/files/images/2011/05/table2.jpg
In our example the onvalidate attribute calls a custom validation function, allowing us to perform client-side validation.

When the user submits the form, Facebook will post a signed request to the URL specified in the redirect_uri attribute. We'll need to decrypt this in our server-side code. Save the following code as submit.php, replacing [APP_ID] and [APP_SECRET] with the values for your app:
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  1. <?php
  2. define('FACEBOOK_APP_ID', '[APP_ID]');
  3. define('FACEBOOK_SECRET', '[APP_SECRET]');
  4.  
  5. function parse_signed_request($signed_request, $secret) {
  6.   list($encoded_sig, $payload) = explode('.', $signed_request, 2);
  7.  
  8.   // decode the data
  9.   $sig = base64_url_decode($encoded_sig);
  10.   $data = json_decode(base64_url_decode($payload), true);
  11.  
  12.   if (strtoupper($data['algorithm']) !== 'HMAC-SHA256') {
  13.     error_log('Unknown algorithm. Expected HMAC-SHA256');
  14.     return null;
  15.   }
  16.  
  17.   // check sig
  18.   $expected_sig = hash_hmac('sha256', $payload, $secret, $raw = true);
  19.   if ($sig !== $expected_sig) {
  20.     error_log('Bad Signed JSON signature!');
  21.     return null;
  22.   }
  23.  
  24.   return $data;
  25. }
  26.  
  27. function base64_url_decode($input) {
  28.     return base64_decode(strtr($input, '-_', '+/'));
  29. }
  30.  
  31. if ($_REQUEST) {
  32.   echo '<p>signed_request contents:</p>';
  33.   $response = parse_signed_request($_REQUEST['signed_request'],
  34.                                    FACEBOOK_SECRET);
  35.   echo '<pre>';
  36.   print_r($response);
  37.   echo '</pre>';
  38. } else {
  39.   echo '$_REQUEST is empty';
  40. }
  41. ?>
When you submit the registration form, the submit page should decode the signed request and display its contents. In a real app you would create your user here.
http://media.netmagazine.futurecdn.net/files/images/2011/05/CustomRegForm.jpg
I don't have space here to cover much of the Registration plug-in functionality, so for more details check out Facebook's documentation.

Like button

Now let’s add a Like button for the page:
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  1. <fb-like></fb-like>
When clicked, this will post a message to the user’s friends’ newsfeeds, linking back to your page. The user can optionally add a comment, which will also appear in the newsfeed. Note that our example page must be reachable by Facebook for the like to work, so you’ll need to host it publicly.

We can also target the like for a specific URL rather than the current page:
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  1. <fb:like href="[YOUR_SITE_URL]/product.html" show_faces="true"></fb:like>
In our example we’ve also added the show_faces attribute to display thumbnails of other users who have liked the object. Various other customisation attributes are described here.

Open Graph

If the target URL of a Like button represents a real-world entity (eg a movie or a product on a shopping website) then you can add Open Graph markup to the target page, which semantically describes the entity. Facebook will read these tags and treat your page as if it were a Facebook page. This means it will appear in the Likes and Interests section of the user’s profile and allow Facebook ads to be targeted at these users. You will also be able to publish updates to the users.

Open Graph markup consists of meta-tags that must be included in the <head> section of your page. The following six tags are required:
http://media.netmagazine.futurecdn.net/files/images/2011/05/table3.jpg
It is important to note that the link that appears in the newsfeed will be the value of og:url rather than the url attribute of the Like button. Also, if the value of og:url is changed, Facebook will treat the page as a new, different Like.

Now let’s create a new target page for our Like button with Open Graph markup. Add the code below to a file called product.html, replacing the values of the og:image, og:url and fb:admins meta-tags with appropriate values for your site:
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  1. <!DOCTYPE html>
  2. <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:og="http://ogp.me/ns#">
  3.   <head>
  4.     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
  5.     <title>Awesome Product</title>
  6.     <meta property="og:title" content="Awesome Product"/>
  7.     <meta property="og:type" content="product"/>
  8.     <meta property="og:image" content="[YOUR_SITE_URL]/product.png"/>
  9.     <meta property="og:url" content="[YOUR_SITE_URL]/product.html"/>
  10.     <meta property="og:site-name" content="Facebook Developer Platform Demo"/>
  11.     <meta property="fb:admins" content="581504668"/>
  12.   </head>
  13.   <body>
  14.     <img src="product.png"/>
  15.     <div>This is an awesome product. You love it!</div>
  16.   </body>
  17. </html>
Now when you click the Like button you should see the Open Graph values in the newsfeed.

Like events

It is sometimes useful to know when a user has liked or unliked an entity. The Like button supports two events - edge.create and edge.remove - for this purpose. Techlightenment’s apps check for these events and use the actions to build the user’s social graph within the app; this helps you understand which users are engaging with the site. The href of the Like is passed as the first parameter in the handler. Let’s handle these events on our test page, simply logging them to our trace panel:
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  1. FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(href, response) {
  2.   trace('edge.create: ' + href);
  3. });
  4.  
  5. FB.Event.subscribe('edge.remove', function(href, response) {
  6.   trace('edge.remove: ' + href);
  7. });

Send button

The Send button is a new addition from Facebook. It’s similar to a Like button but sends messages towards a specific set of friends rather than the user’s newsfeed. We’ll add one for our product page:
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  1. <fb:send href="[YOUR_SITE_URL]/product.html"></fb:send>
Rather than edge.create, the Send button generates a message.send event, which we'll also add to our page:
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  1. FB.Event.subscribe('message.send', function(href, response) {
  2.   trace('message.send: ' + href);
  3. });
As you can see, the handler only gets passed the href of the like so it is not possible to get the selected list of friends.

Note that the Like button also supports a new attribute send="true", which will render it as a combined Like and Send button.

Other plug-ins

There are a bunch of other Facebook plugins that are simple to add to your site and can significantly increase user engagement.

The Activity Feed plugin displays Facebook activity related to your site:
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  1. <fb:activity site="[YOUR_SITE_URL]" width="300" height="300" header="true"></fb:activity>
http://media.netmagazine.futurecdn.net/files/images/2011/05/activity.png
The Recommendations plug-in shows recommendations for your site:
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  1. <fb:recommendations site="[YOUR_SITE_URL]" width="300" height="300" header="true"></fb:recommendations>
http://media.netmagazine.futurecdn.net/files/images/2011/05/recommendations.png
The Comments plug-in provides a comments box, which also optionally publishes comments to the user's friends' News Feed:
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  1. <fb:comments href="[YOUR_SITE_URL]" num_posts="2" width="500"></fb:comments>
http://media.netmagazine.futurecdn.net/files/images/2011/05/comments.png
The Live Stream plugin allows users on your site to share activity and comments in real time:
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  1. <fb:live-stream event_app_id="[APP_ID]" width="600" height="400" xid="" always_post_to_friends="false"></fb:live-stream>
http://media.netmagazine.futurecdn.net/files/images/2011/05/livefeed.png

Facebook dialogs

Facebook Dialogs are standard dialogs you can include on your site to enable the user to interact with Facebook in various ways. The available dialogs are:
http://media.netmagazine.futurecdn.net/files/images/2011/05/table4.jpg
All dialogs are invoked through the FB.ui call. For our demo site we'll add a Feed Dialog. Add the following function:
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  1. function postToWall() {
  2.     FB.ui(
  3.     {
  4.         method: 'feed',
  5.         name: 'Facebook Dialogs Example',
  6.         description: 'This is a demo of the Feed Dialog.',
  7.         message: 'Enter your message'
  8.     },
  9.     function(response) {
  10.         if (response && response.post_id) {
  11.             trace('Post was published.');
  12.         } else {
  13.             trace('Post was not published.');
  14.         }
  15.      }
  16.    );
  17. }
Now add a button to invoke it:
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  1. <input type="button" id="post_button" disabled="true" value="Post to wall" onclick="postToWall();"/>

Graph API

Once a user has granted permissions to your application, you may use the Facebook Graph API to pull information from their Social Graph. Which information you can access depends on the permissions that were requested during login and the privacy settings of the user's profile.

You can see a list of all available graph objects here. For this tutorial we are going to fetch a list of the user's likes and display them in our trace window.

Graph access is through the FB.api method, passing the path to the graph object. The path element “me” is used to represent the current user. All data is returned as JSON. Add the following code at the end of our loggedIn function to pull the likes and display them in our trace window.
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  1. FB.api('/me/likes', function(response) {
  2.     data = response['data'];
  3.     for (var key in data) {
  4.         trace(data[key]['name']);
  5.     }
  6. });

Conclusion

Hopefully this whirlwind tour of the Facebook Developer Platform has shown you how quick and easy it is to add social content to your site. Although we've touched on most of the available features, there's a whole lot more you can do. You can download the tutorial files from https://github.com/chascoppard/chascoppard.github.com/tree/master/connectdemo. Check our Facebook's developer documentation and get coding!

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What Brands Need to Know About Facebook Hashtags

Today, Facebook begins rolling out hashtags on its News Feed, and just like hashtags on Twitter, Vine and Instagram, Facebook's hashtags will be functional. Clicking the hashtag will pop out a feed that shows others’ posts that have included the same hashtag. All hashtags on Facebook, even when uploaded to the page via another platform (like Twitter or Instagram), will function as clickable and searchable hashtags. Facebook expects all users to have this capability in the next few weeks.
Facebook Hashtag Example

Facebook Hashtag Brand Opportunities

Real-time conversation tracking

Facebook users will be able to search for a specific hashtag from the search bar and compose posts directly from the hashtag feed. Hashtag feeds may operate as chat threads and continue to further conversations more. The process is quick and easy to follow, making it easy for real-time conversations to move quickly.
Look for monitoring tools to start integrating this into their platforms. You’ll now be able to monitor conversations surrounding your brand in real-time, which adds another layer of metrics and numbers to gauge success.
We spoke with Erica McClenny, Expion's senior vice president of client services. She said the social media marketing platform will likely incorporate a hashtag-monitoring function into their Facebook platform.
“Expion is always looking for new measurement sources, so it's on our radar,” she said. “As many options as Facebook will allow in the API, we're willing to entertain and implement. Stay tuned!”
Conversations about a new campaign will be easy to monitor on Facebook, which is convenient for brands that aren’t on Twitter. Keep in mind that only public hashtags will appear in the search, so it’s likely that brands will still miss the majority of conversations happening on Facebook because of privacy restrictions and settings.
Facebook hashtag post

User-generated content

Hashtags were created in 2007 by Chris Messina, as a way to monitor interests on Twitter. Internationally, the hashtag went mainstream on Twitter during the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests, as both English and Persian-language hashtags became useful for Twitter users following the events.  The purpose of hashtags is to follow a conversation, yet we often see users who take hashtags to the #extreme by tagging words that don’t necessarily help guide a conversation.
Hashtags on Facebook will be useful for user-generated content. A girl posts a picture of her killer high heels and hashtags #Louboutin? Depending on your legal guidelines that could be a photo your page could use. This will definitely help the brands generate more images for their pages. And we know how much Facebook loves its images.

Listening

Brands will have the ability to listen to conversations about their products, positive or negative, simply by following the hashtag feed as opposed to Wall monitoring. Brands should evaluate their legal guidelines toward clickable hashtags, and if and how they’ll respond to complaints that aren’t directly posted on their wall.
This could also provide opportunity for social media management platforms to step in and develop monitoring tools for hashtag feeds.

Privacy

Facebook will maintain their privacy settings regarding hashtags, and won’t allow users to show up in click-throughs of the hashtag if their settings are set to be shared only with friends (similar to that of a “share”).

Facebook Hashtag Brand Challenges

Feeds not yet on mobile

Mobile will still have to live in a hashtag-free world as mobile apps don't yet support the hashtag feeds. Mobile users will still be able to place a hashtag phrase in their posts from mobile but won’t be able to click-through for the hashtag feed.

One more stream to monitor

This will be one more communication stream for a Facebook marketer to keep an eye on. Time management is key to evaluating how important hashtag feeds are for the Community Manager to monitor.

Facebook looking to make money

Hashtags on Facebook could mean another thing to Facebook – ad dollars. Facebook says they aren’t yet offering hashtag targeting for Facebook advertising, but we predict that it’s certainly on their radar. Advertisers can still use hashtags in their ads, but only the ad hashtags appearing on a desktop News Feed will be functional.

Content from brands

You know that girl who posts dozens of hashtags on Instagram? Expect to see that on Facebook. However, your brand shouldn’t function this way. Hashtags should be applied on Facebook where applicable and without becoming overbearing. Buddy Media's “Strategies for Effective Tweeting: A Statistical Review” shows two hashtags are optimal for that platform. We look forward to seeing what will be ideal for Facebook.
Brands may also see opportunity insert themselves into trending conversations that aren’t surrounding their brand, but don't try to hijack an unrelated conversation.
“The hashtag will influence how a brand jumps into ‘hot’ conversations, but it also becomes a way to maximize SEO on Facebook,” McClenny said. “If there's a new product launch, a brand could use the word #cookie to insert themselves into people searching for cookies.“

Potential Opportunities Down The Road

We asked McClenny if she thought brands would be able to identify influencers via Facebook hashtags. She said she’s “unsure” so far, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for developing features on the platform.
Facebook does reiterate that “Creative best practices on Facebook still apply—compelling copy and photography that is in the brand voice tend to garner better response and engagement rates.”
For brands that spend enough to receive CAT data, we expect hashtag conversations to be an added analysis for pages.
…………………………………………………………………………..



Facebook is a popular social networking website
Facebook is a popular social networking website, whose name originated as the nickname of directories handed out to university students that aided in their getting to know their fellow students.

TheFacebook

On February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg relaunched with a new website "Thefacebook". Six days later, Mark Zuckerberg again faced trouble when three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of stealing their ideas for an intended social network website called HarvardConnection, and of using their ideas for TheFacebook. Winklevoss, Winklevoss, and Narendra later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, however, the matter was settled out of court.
Membership to the website was at first restricted to Harvard College students. Zuckerberg enlisted a few of his fellow students to help grow the website: Eduardo Saverin worked on business, Dustin Moskovitz as a programmer, Andrew McCollum as a graphic artist, and Chris Hughes. Together the team expanded the site to additional universities and colleges.

Facebook

In 2004, an angel investor, Sean Parker (founder of Napster) became the company's president. The company changed the name from TheFacebook to just Facebook after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.
Mark Zuckerberg's antics finally did pay off when profits from Facebook made him the world's youngest multi-billionaire. Kudos goes to Zuckerberg for spreading the wealth around, according to the NYTimes, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million dollars to the Newark, New Jersey public school system, which has long been underfunded.

Historical Facebook - Facebook for Dead People


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNaCx_q12W8WvpDOzCwv-WxT0nOUtD4C8rfq0yvKdjqIxY60wLyHEogE7kII_R4yRb4gUyy5TDSvHcLiulV09bZbBZaJEpASjbv6S8IiLvTKoc76k_xK9fX4WIxtDi6RkrvUPh7MN3CJiz/s400/Screen+shot+2010-08-09+at+9.46.18+AM.pngFacebook, the third most populated country in the world, is a huge part of many students' lives. Students do a lot of writing on Facebook. To leverage students' familiarity with Facebook for a history lesson, Derrick Waddell created a Facebook template for historical figures. This template, available through the Google Docs public template gallery, asks students to complete a Facebook profile for famous people throughout history. The template has a place for pictures, an "about me" section, a friends column, and a map to plot the travels of historical figures. Please note, this template will not result in an actual Facebook account being created.
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What Parents Need to Know About Facebook's New Privacy Controls

Facebook changed its privacy settings on Wednesday and it's important to know what the new changes mean for users, especially your digitally-connected children.
You might notice that now a few of your privacy settings are housed under one area called Privacy Shortcuts. But you may not see the changes on your profile yet — Facebook said it will be rolling this out through the end of this year.
SEE ALSO: Here's What the New Facebook Privacy Settings Will Look Like
Nicky Jackson Colaco, manager of privacy and safety at Facebook, tells Mashable these settings haven't been changed so much as moved, and one setting has been enhanced. The goal was to make it easier for users to access, and be aware of, their privacy while on Facebook.
"The idea is that privacy follows you," she says.
Right now to see your privacy settings, you navigate to the top right corner and click on the drop-down menu to select "privacy settings." Soon, a shortcut menu located in your toolbar, under a lock icon, will let you see some your privacy settings in one place. You'll still be able to access your privacy settings from the drop-down menu.
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The one setting that's changed is a feature called, "Who can look up my timeline by name." Only a small number of users have this, like people who joined Facebook eight years ago (and early on) when it was a website for college students and searching by name was the only way to find someone. Now, Colaco says, it gives people a false sense of security because there are many ways to find people on Facebook these days. Users with this feature will be notified that it's shutting down.
The updated Activity Log, which shows you all your activities on Facebook, will now let you go through all of the pictures on Facebook in which you're tagged that are set to public.
"It's critical for parents to understand — even if someone decides to hide something in their timeline, that photo might still be available somewhere on Facebook," she says. "There's a difference between what can be found on your timeline and what's on Facebook."
With a new feature called the "report and remove tool," users can select multiple photos to be untagged. You can also generate a pre-populated message asking that users delete the photo — the messages can be sent in bulk, too. Colaco says most users are amenable to taking down photos but, if the message doesn't work, you can report the photo to Facebook.
The message feature could be especially useful to teens who might want a photo removed, but don't want to write the message.
However, just because you're untagged in a photo, and sometimes even if it's deleted by the user, that doesn't mean it's gone from the Interwebs. But at least when someone untags you in a Facebook photo, users won't see it if they search for your name.
The recent Facebook voting poll that closed on Dec. 10 was for the site's SRR and Data Use Policy, not privacy settings.
SEE ALSO: The Fine Line Between Monitoring Your Kids and Spying
Common Sense Media CEO Jim Steyer tells Mashable, it's important for parents to talk to their teens about how they use Facebook or any social network.
Steyer provides these tips for parents:

  • Think before you post, because it’s hard to take it down.
  • Remember that “friending” someone connects you to that person, but also to her friends, and her friends’ friends. Facebook has an incentive to increase connections between users on their service, and you need to discuss how connected your 13-year-old should be.
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Facebook 101: Ten Things You Need to Know About Facebook

When Mark Zuckerberg was 19 and a student at Harvard University, he wanted to find a way for his fellow Harvard colleagues to connect with each other. So in February 2004, Zuckerberg introduced Facebook (www.facebook.com) and a new era of networking began.
Today, the social networking site has more than 60 million active members, roughly the same population as the U.K. These users can now upload photos, have group discussions, and even play games on their individual profiles; they can also add one another as “friends” and connect with users who share sim­ilar interests, regardless of where they are in the world. Nowadays, more businesses and corporate folks are joining Facebook too, adding their pages to the Facebook network. Advertisers are even turning their attention to this growing market for good reason—there is strength in numbers. So what should you know about Facebook? Here are 10 things for starters.

1. Who Is Using Facebook?

Since its inception in February 2004, Facebook has grown significantly, and it now has more than 60 million active users. In comparison, MySpace has a total of 300 million users, although not all are active (“active” users are those who have logged in within the last 30 days). According to Facebook’s statistics page, the number of active users has doubled every 6 months, with 250,000 new users joining each day since January 2007 for an average of 3% growth per week. According to internet-ranking company comScore, Facebook is the sixth-most trafficked site in the U.S., with the average user spending 20 minutes a day actively using Facebook by uploading photos, sending messages, or even having discussions within a group. The highly coveted demographic (from 18 to 25 years old) is 52% of Facebook’s userbase, averaging 30 to 45 minutes each day on the site.

2. What Can You Find on Facebook?

Simply put, if people have an interest, it is part of Facebook. A user just has to enter a topic, such as “video games” or “new technology,” into the search box and then hit the “search” button. Up to 1,000 profiles are displayed, 20 at a time, starting with people in the user’s network. If a user who belongs to the University of North Carolina (UNC) network is searching for basketball fans, the results returned would be people in the UNC network first, followed by those in other networks.
From that point, a user can contact others by clicking “send message” or, if that user has a group, by clicking on the “invite to group” button. The user will see an increased number of members joining and participating in the group’s message board discussions.
Facebook also has a “poke” feature, which, in most circles, is regarded as a form of online flirtation, comparable to match.com’s “winks.” When one user is poked by another, a notification appears on the user’s homepage, allowing him or her to either “poke back” the other user or “hide poke,” which makes the poke disappear.

3. Why Are People Using Facebook?

For one thing, it’s an easy icebreaker. Imagine an incoming freshman at a large university who is into electronic gaming, specifically Halo, a popular first-person-shooter game for the Xbox. In an attempt to find people who like the same game, the student logs into Facebook and enters “Halo” in the search box. Facebook then returns up to 1,000 users at the freshman’s university who have Halo listed in their interests sections. He can send messages to the people whose profiles came up during the search and set up a giant Halo game from his computer on move-in day. The freshman has found his niche, and he can concentrate on seeing who his competition is for the Halo crown as well.
Certain people join Facebook just to have their own place to upload photos so they can share them with friends and family. Other users, like Colin McEvoy, an avid movie buff, log in to check on user-submitted movie reviews. “I have friends like me who are real movie geeks,” McEvoy says. “I can check what they have to say about a film. It’s quicker than reading a full-blown movie review. You can compile your own ratings so you can compare and contrast them with others. I like it because I can see if there are any films I might like that I haven’t watched yet.”

4. What Kinds of Third-Party Programs Can You Add?

According to the Facebook Developers website (http://developers.facebook.com), the software development kit (SDK) allows users to create programs and post them on Facebook. Developers can create “applications that deeply integrate into a user’s Facebook experience.” In technical terms, “the Facebook API uses a REST-based interface. This means that our Facebook method calls are made over the internet by sending HTTP GET or POST requests to our REST server. With the API, you can add social context to your application by utilizing profile, friend, photo, and event data.”
From Java-based Tetris Clones to the Flixster-based “Movies” application that enables users to look at movies and share their reviews with others, there’s a long list of application titles to choose from (there are more than 10,000 applications, with 100 more being added each day), and there’s no limit to the amount of third-party programs a user can add.
“I chose the apps that correlate with my own hobbies,” says McEvoy. “It’s like there’s a bunch of vampire and zombie apps that I get asked to add each time I login, but I’m into movies, I’m into books, so I can pick and choose the ones I want and ignore the ones I don’t.”
McEvoy echoes the sentiment of most of the Facebook community, noting that although there’s a large collection of applications to add to a user’s profile, only certain applications will pique an individual’s interest enough to add it to his or her profile.

5. What Are Advertisers Doing There?

Joseph Caviston, founder of Burnt Carbon Productions (a music label that signs local up-and-coming bands in the northeast Pennsylvania area), says that using Facebook to advertise is invaluable. “As a promo tool, it’s great,” Caviston says. “Say a band’s going to a venue they’ve never played at before. Using Facebook, I can just type in the name of a band that’s similar to the one I’m promoting and get a larger base to send materials to.”
Although Burnt Carbon Productions also has a MySpace page, Caviston pre­fers Facebook. “I like Facebook for promoting more than MySpace,” he says. “It’s a lot more user-friendly; I can target my exact audience in colleges and towns near where my bands are playing.”
“Before the bands I have signed [up] go on tour, I take out an ad in each of the cities they’re visiting, and it helps out quite a bit [with audience turnout],” he says. “You can’t touch it because you can target the exact audience you need.”

6. Who Else Is Joining the Facebook Network?

More than half of Facebook users are no longer in college, while users 25 and older are now the fastest growing demographic for the social networking site. Although most of the users in this age group have graduated from college, they are still active on the site. East Stroudsburg University senior Matt Haley, founder of Pandemic Hosting, a web-hosting startup, says that he’s targeting the 25-and-older crowd when he buys ads on Facebook. “Facebook targets tech-savvy people,” he says. “I know that some of the people in my target will be looking to create their own website for one reason or another. Some want to open a business, while others just want a site for their resume.”
By tapping into this demographic, Haley says he wants to get his name tossed into the web-hosting fray, adding that although Pandemic Hosting is a small enterprise, “all it takes is impressing a few people, and it’ll expand from there.”
Graduates also use Facebook to keep in touch, often using the Groups tool to invite former roommates and friends to upcoming events, such as engagement parties and baby showers.
With the 2008 presidential elections on the horizon, many political figures, most notably Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani, and Ron Paul, have set up Facebook pages to spark more interest in their bids for the White House.
[At press time, Rudy Giuliani had dropped out of the race. —Ed.]
Upon adding a candidate to the “politicians you support” section on a personal page, a user can now enter into discussions on the politician’s message board where candidates often write and spark conversations with their supporters on a variety of issues from healthcare reform to ending the war in Iraq.

7. What Groups Are Now on Facebook?

There are countless groups on Facebook, which run the gamut from political groups (Newsvine’s Election ’08) to current events (Americans for Alternative Energy) to self-proclaimed pointless groups (The Largest Facebook Group Ever).
Within the groups, users are free to post photos and write on the group’s “wall,” (a type of forum) to speak with others who share their interests. Political groups and “just-for-fun” groups are not the only options, however. There are a number of Facebook groups for professional organizations, such as the Library 2.0 Interest Group, while Media 2.0 and the American Library Association (ALA) also have groups.

8. Why Is Facebook So Popular for Sharing Photos?

Uploading photos is a cinch thanks to Facebook’s easy-to-use interface. The browser-based program shows a grid of thumbnail-sized pictures while the user clicks a checkbox on the photos he or she wants to upload.
According to comScore, Facebook is the No. 1 photo sharing application on the web, with more than 14 million photos uploaded daily. In comparison, Flickr, the No. 2 photo sharing application, averages 3 million to 5 million uploads a day.

9. How Do You Find Old Friends and New Colleagues?

By using Facebook’s search feature, a user just needs to type someone’s name and four options (send message, poke, view friends, and add to friends) will appear next to a small thumbnail picture of the person.
If the person shares a network with the user and allows nonfriends to see his or her profile (see the section on privacy settings below), a user can click on the thumbnail picture, which brings up relevant data about the person, such as education information, musical tastes, and favorite TV shows, among others.
A user can also search for people from any network simply by typing a portion of the network’s name in the search field then clicking on the relevant network, which works well if an old acquaintance has a common name.

10. What About Privacy?

Facebook allows users to control their thumbnail views, which is shown when another user searches based on name or keyword. Everyone can use Facebook’s privacy settings to control who can see his or her full profile. If a user is in a network and another person’s profile is public, he or she can click on the thumbnail picture to view the profile. Likewise, if the profile options are set to private, the user must be “friends” with the second party to view the profile. There is also an option to show only a limited profile, which is user-defined by the privacy settings.
Setting up a Facebook page is easy. All a potential user needs is an email address. If the address is tied to a college, the user will be entered into his or her college’s network. For example, East Strouds­burg University (ESU) students will be placed in the ESU network based on the @esu.edu suffix.
If the address is not tied to a network, the user must decide which network to join after reviewing a short selection process. Filling in personal and educational data is not required, but it will give the page a better feel, especially since the user can click on his or her listed interests to view other users’ profiles that have the same interests listed on their homepages.
Once those steps are completed, new users can join groups, read and post in discussion forums, and add third-party programs to their sites.
Mark Logic, Inc. recently joined Facebook with its Kick It application, according to Dave Kellogg, president and CEO. “We launched it because we saw an opportunity to build a nice, simple example of the power of XQuery and XML search,” he says. But the app was created quite by accident (who said “Necessity is the mother of invention”?) by David Amusin, a new staffer at Mark Logic and a recent engineering graduate from the University of California–Berkeley. Amusin had an extra ticket to see the Dave Matthews Band and wanted to find a friend to invite to the concert. Facebook’s existing search wasn’t very helpful in searching for friends by interest category, so Amusin built the Kick It (aka “hang out”) app with the Facebook API. The result was a new way to help find people to “kick it” with and learn more about their friends.
Kellogg reports that bloggers who have found the “neat little app” have responded quite positively to it. But the company isn’t making a big push to drive traffic and doesn’t plan on making money on it. “In the midterm, I think more and more publishers are going to want to link with the social graph and associated information in building their products,” says Kellogg. “They will want to use content platforms that show demonstrable Facebook integration and to work with suppliers who understand how to leverage the Facebook API.”

Facebook at a Glance

The sixth-most trafficked site in the U.S. (according to comScore) has the following:
• More than 64 million active users
• An average of 250,000 new users registered each day
• More than 55,000 regional, work-related, collegiate, and high school networks
• More than 14 million photos uploaded daily
• More than 65 billion page views per month
• More than half of users are outside college
• The fastest growing demographic of 25 and older
The U.S. has the most users, followed by the U.K. with more than 8 million active users, and then Canada with more than 7 million active users.
* Statistics from www.facebook.com in mid-February.
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