Facebook Cookbook

Attachments and the Publisher

Problem

According to Dave Morin, senior Platform manager, Facebook’s servers process over a billion messages every day. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if some percentage of them (even a small percentage!) included an attachment promoting my application?

Solution

Attachments are an easy way to make that happen. Prior to the Profile redesign of mid-2008, attachments were essentially limited to being attached to Facebook messages. The new Publisher—the strip of controls across the top of every Profile that enables users to publish content—now includes the ability to attach app content directly to Profiles. Every user who has your application installed will see your app’s icon and Attachment Action listed in the Publisher, as shown in Figure 2-31.

Figure 2-31. The Publisher

The “Add Music/Video” and “Causes” items in the screenshot appear because I have the iLike and Causes applications installed in my Profile. Clicking on the down arrow to the right of Causes shows a list of additional apps that offer attachments (from all of the apps I’ve installed), as in Figure 2-32.

Figure 2-32. Publisher attachments

Clicking on your app’s link will bring up a dialog box with FBML inside, which gives your users the opportunity to customize their attachments (simpler apps might just ...