Category: Social

Twitter Cards

Post author By Rob Fahrni
Post date August 4, 2012

All Things D, by Mike Isaac: “This was a big deal. Countless numbers of smaller start-ups rely on access to Twitterâ€™s public-facing feed, using the tweets in their own businesses for any number of reasons. If the terms of access were to be altered significantly, it could impact the livelihoods of thousands. The company didnâ€™t elaborate on what exactly those guidelines would be, and has said little else since. The key takeaway echoed in one repeated word: Consistency. Twitterâ€™s future plans strove for consistency across the platform.”

I had started a post to talk about where I thought Twitter was headed, but there’s no need to finish it. Mike Isaac did a great job in his article, and can actually write. It’s better to stick with the pros.

I wonder where this is all headed, given the Delivering a consistent Twitter experience post June 29:

“Related to that, weâ€™ve already begun to more thoroughly enforce our Developer Rules of the Road with partners, for example with branding, and in the coming weeks, we will be introducing stricter guidelines around how the Twitter API is used.”

If cards are a future piece to the Twitter puzzle and they’re after a consistent user experience where does that leave third party client developers? Has Twitter made contact with them to share how they should proceed with their implementation of Twitter Cards?

The Ugly Option

I still believe there is a slight chance Twitter could pull the plug on all third party clients, but I hope not. This would give Twitter full control over all clients and allow them to kill off all their native clients and go straight for HTML in the browser.

This is, of course, a horrible idea. HTML on mobile is still disgusting, slow, and provides a horrible user experience. Why go that route?

The Compromise

Twitter could be a real standup citizen and provide third party clients with guidelines for the inclusion of Twitter Cards, and other options, in client applications. They could also provide an expected timeline for inclusion of these features and allow the clients to operate without the new feature until that date. When the date expires and the client doesn’t include the new feature implemented in a Twitter approved way, they’re cut off until they are compliant.

If you’re interested you can read about Twitter Cards on the Twitter Developers site.

Tags Cards, Twitter

How To Social

Updating Twitter from a Facebook RSS feed

Post author By Rob Fahrni
Post date July 18, 2012

Last November Eureka Burger opened a new store in San Luis Obispo and I wanted to keep up to date on events, so I searched for them on Twitter. No luck. They didn’t have a Twitter account, but they did have a Facebook page.

@EurekaBurgerSLO

Since I knew I could publish to Twitter from the excellent ifttt using an RSS feed I setup an Unofficial Eureka Burger SLO Twitter account, @EurekaBurgerSLO. A few clicks to create a Recipe on ifttt and the account was up and running.

Enter Facebook Timelines

When Facebook switched on the new Timeline feature the RSS feed for Eureka Burger SLO stopped working and the @EurekaBurgerSLO account stopped updating. Since I didn’t have a Facebook account I asked my wife to go through the process of finding an RSS feed for a Facebook Timeline. We couldn’t find one, so I gave up on the account and approached a Manager at Eureka Burger SLO about taking over the account. He agreed and I turned over the account to Eureka Burger. I was absolutely trilled. I no longer had to maintain the account and all the problems that might come along for the ride.

Why isn’t it updating?

After a while I noticed the @EurekaBurgerSLO account stopped updating. Why? Well it looks like they had one person updating the feed, instead of hooking it to their Facebook account to automagically publish to Twitter. As of this writing the last update was June 8, 2012. That really bummed me out.

Introducing @SLOEurekaBurger

That’s right, I’ve created a new account so I can automagically update it and see what beer is featured on “Steal the glass night.”

This time around I did a bit of digging, ok, I did a single Google query that lead me to this entry of Stack Overflow. It allowed me to dig out the Facebook RSS feed for Eureka Burger SLO with a couple URL’s.

How To Find a Facebook Wall RSS Feed

We’re going to use the Eureka Burger SLO Facebook account as an example, since it’s what I used.

Step 1: Right click the GIGANTOR image, known as a Cover, and copy the URL.

In this case the URL is:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=335049253213178&set=a.335049249879845.89916.234741763243928&type=1

All we need is the fbid parameter, in bold above.

Step 2: Check the Facebook Graph for that fbid

http://graph.facebook.com/335049253213178

The graph call will produce a JSON feed that looks like this:

Notice the highlighted number id. We need to copy that number for the next step in the process.

Step 3: Get the RSS Feed

https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=234741763243928&format=rss20

Once again, notice the bold text above. That’s the id we copied from step two. Now you have an RSS feed for a Facebook Wall. Very nice.

Step 4: Create an ifttt Recipe

Since I needed a way to publish that RSS feed to the new @SLOEurekaBurger Twitter account I chose to use ifttt. I’ll let you go explore that. Ifttt is an awesome service if you need to transform data from one format to another, or from a format to a social media stream, like going from a Facebook RSS feed to Twitter.

Hopefully someone will find this useful. I know I did. Let’s hope it works.

Tags Facebook, ifttt, Twitter

Social

Facebook Is Not Your Brand

Post author By Rob Fahrni
Post date July 14, 2012
2 Comments on Facebook Is Not Your Brand

I’m not a fan of Facebook. That’s ok, plenty of you are fans. The business world is obsessed with Facebook. I’d imagine most major corporations have a Facebook page by now. Why? Facebook is not your brand. Why should you promote another companies brand by using them as your main page? Why not use your corporate website for that? Sure, you can have a Facebook page, and advertise there, just don’t make that your brands main site. Doesn’t it seem counter to what you’re trying to achieve? Don’t you want the focus to be your brand, not the fact it’s hosted on Facebook?

Here’s a quote from an article in Fortune that left me thinking, you’re doing it wrong.

The Timeline redesign changed all of that. Tabs have been minimized and — more importantly — companies can no longer set a default landing page. For brands, a critical chance to make a first impression is gone. The first thing users now see on Pages is a fluid, ever-shifting Timeline of recent posts and comments

Emphasis is mine. Why in the world would a company rely on something completely out of their control to make a first impression?

Host your content on your website. It’s your brand, it belongs to you. Link to your important content from your Facebook and Twitter account. That’s what the Internet is all about. Links. Facebook is a walled garden. Why trap your content behind those drab blue walls?

Here’s a great example, at least for me it’s a great example. Peter Jackson has been posting updates about the progress on The Hobbit via his Facebook page. I don’t have a Facebook account, so I can’t get behind the wall to see his updates. Why would you make those posts private? Wouldn’t you like 100% of the people who have access to the Internet to have access to those updates? I guess not. Maybe Peter Jackson’s company is being paid handsomely for his Facebook updates?