Social Network and Facebook Integration - The Next Big Thing

29 August 2007 - By Sean Fishlock

With millions of people jumping onto social networking sites, the next trend in web development may well be linking applications into this growing market of content consumers.

Integration into social networking applications already offers benefits to consumers, such as being able to submit a blog entry on Blogger or WordPress or photos to Flickr and then use them also on your website.  YouTube integration allows streaming videos to be shared and embedded on any website.  Syndication and RSS allows people to display content from other people's websites and blogs on their own pages.

But the next step in Web 2.0 is businesses harnessing the powers of social networking sites through integrated applications.

Social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Linked-in have millions of registered users world-wide. 

While Linked-in is the businessman's online networking tool and MySpace a social webpage platform, Facebook has traditionally been laid back, but somewhere in between, offering both friends and group membership for individuals. 

Recent reports show that social networking sites are exploding.  There are now 34 million active Facebook members and over 100 million MySpace accounts.  Facebook is continually expanding into an older demographic.

Facebook at least, take the potential very seriously.  The announcement of their open platform and deep integration abililty in May has opened the door to some serious competition in this space, and creating huge waves in the industry.  In comparison, Linked-in's business model is information at a price.   Linked-in has since signalled its intention to follow, but for them it may be too little too late.

The potential that comes with this API (Application Programming Interface) and web services and social networking sites is, in my opinion, absolutely massive.   It offers new ideas and possibilities, but also issues.

We look at just a few.


Take CRM (Customer Relationship Managment) for example.  The networks that sites like Facebook create are basically massive contact management systems.   Many people move from job to job and role to role.  It is often difficult to update this information.  Yet services such as Facebook offer a central repository for the information, which can be regularly updated.  

Facebook authentication could eventually offer Web Single sign-on (Web-SSO) for many of the applications which we use on a daily basis.  This is something which Microsoft's .NET Passport and Windows Live ID hasn't been able to achieve due to its closed technology approach.

Obviously privacy is an issue, but not something that can't be addressed.  Sites like Facebook require people to select their own privacy preferences.  Integration and/or authentication is suitable for many medium to low security online business applications, but not for an Online Banking applications or military databases.

And while Facebook is the flavour of the month at the moment, all it takes is for a new service which offers an easy transition to get a foothold in the marketplace, and integration would lose effectiveness and need to be looked at again.  With any consumer based technology, the online applications should always be views as a commodity, so it pays to never put your eggs in one basket.

Many websites have community features such as blogs and discussion forums which allow contribution of information by registered members.  By integrating Facebook, they can utilise their personalised information with these features and customise their Facebook pages to include lists of these services, and even recommend to friends.  This makes community and member driven websites much more powerful.

In terms of content creation, hooking in to Facebook's blogging capacity can potentially enable users to publish news and articles on integrated websites. 

There are already several success stories of businesses building applications specifically aimed at the Facebook  platform and market.  One of the more popular applications is SplashCast , which allows similar features to YouTube, but aimed at video content for private audiences and sharing amongst friends.  Other applications help users to discover new music recommended by friends.

Non-profit companies can now tap into direct and viral marketing initiatives centred around Facebook.  Datalink is currently planning such a project with Plan Australia.  Other industries that come to mind where social networking can be a powerful tool are political organisations.

Recognising this future, we have already started to integrate social networking technologies into our Freestyler CMS.  Enabling modules such as Facebook extensions gives our content management system the ability to support open user and contact management and to integrate many of the Web 2.0 and community features that it offers to website users.  Freestyler offers security system which separates front-end from system users, which addresses privacy and security issues. 

Obviously there are many other possibilities for your project and we look forward to hearing some of your ideas and making them a reality.   We know several APIs including the Facebook API and have the skills to make it work for you.

Comments

By Jtsubo on 08 May 2009 at 03:30 AM

Anikanchan<br /><br />
<br /><br />
You can use the pointer addthis.com which enables a user to point/share from/to other social networks

By Anikanchan on 10 February 2009 at 05:50 AM

We are planning to integrate Facebook, MySpace, Tweeters, Orkut etc. Is there any instance of it? Can I get any pointers?

By Sean Fishlock on 18 February 2008 at 10:58 AM

Pop me an email Becky. Use our online contact form. Cheers !

By Becky on 08 February 2008 at 12:31 AM

Hi,

I work for a university alumni office in ny. Recently, we decided that we wanted to intergrate facebook/linkin (if possible) to our alumni online community and wanted to know how to best achieve that...

Becky

By Scott Davey on 19 December 2007 at 01:26 PM

Steve,

What you're talking about is a single sign-on process. This is possible on facebook with the right approach.

Give us a call or drop us your contact info via our form and we can work with you to make this happen.

Cheers, Scott

By Austin on 18 December 2007 at 05:47 AM

Hi,

I am developing a social network website and a Facebook Application to bring in the users to the same.

I want to make sure that if someone already has my facebook application and is signed on to Facebook, then there is no need to enter log-in info if they click on any of the website links on the Facebook Application I meantion. What I want is for the site and Facebook to work seamlessly as if they were part of the same site.

Is this possible? How can i do this?

Look forward to your response.

Thanks,
Steve


Name *


Comment *


Verification code *


Click to regenerate Regenerate code

Promotional Banner
Our website is fully integrated into our business. Thanks Datalink. Click here to find out how.
Creative e-business