Login

Facebook like isn't Facebook integration


Tuesday, May 06 2008 - Social Networking

Building applications that provide Social Networking capabilities is not building integration to Facebook.  Recently I have been working on some web parts that integrate to the Facebook API using a .NET library called the Facebook Developer Toolkit.  When I tell other people that I am working on Facebook web parts I usually get 1 of 2 responses.

  1. The first response might be, "Well I don't really care for Facebook and don't see why you would use it in the first place".  Well honestly they are not that polite and respond with words I shouldn't repeat.
  2. Second I hear, "I know someone that is building some Facebook web parts".

Let's just assume for the first response that you understand why you would integrate SharePoint with Facebook and have a real business need already in your organization.  For the second response I find that the statement is usually not true.  In fact most of the people that I talk with that are working on "Facebook web parts" are really just modifying the MySite templates and pages.  When they explain to other people what they are working on they tell them they are working on "Facebook like" work.

When you are talking to customers, ISVs, or other developers and they say they are working on Facebook like web parts, make sure and ask if they are actually doing integration to Facebook or if they are building web parts that take advantage of the SharePoint User Profile.

Here are the current web parts that are completed for Integration to Facebook

  1. ReceiverFacebookPart
  2. UserProfileFacebookPart
  3. FriendsFacebookPart
Digg It!  StumbleUpon  Reddit  Del.icio.us  NewsVine  Furl  BlinkList  Ma.gnolia  Technorati

Tagged as: , ,

» Trackback URL to this Post

http://blogs.sharepointguys.com/brendon/trackback.ashx?id=16

Comments

#1 Brent on 5.08.2008 at 12:55 AM

Are you going to be providing the code for those web parts?

Also, here is a very simple example of a Facebook web part: www.litesuite.com/.../litefacebook.as

Actually, it is just a page viewer web part which points to a page using the Facebook JavaScript API. A mashup with colleague data is next on the to-do list via the user profile web service. Challenge is how to mesh the two sets of user profiles since typically people use their personal email address on Facebook...interested in your thoughts on this.

#2 Brendon Schwartz on 5.08.2008 at 9:45 PM

Not sure about giving out the code yet.

I have seen the LiteSuite Facebook IFrame, but the parts I have are server side code. Set up and review of the parts to come.

A major problem I am having is how to show the user that nothing is stored on the server and the account is not used in the wrong way. These are more to understand how to use them in an Enterprise environment.

Keep posted and thanks for the feedback.

#3 Charlie on 4.29.2009 at 6:20 AM

Just wondering, where you put 'Here are the current web parts that are completed for Integration to Facebook' were there ever any links for downloading them (opensource code or not?). I see this post is about a year old so I'm hoping things are even more positive now?

Thanks,

Charlie