Facebook® Application Development For Dummies®

Picking a Platform That Works Right for You

You have two ways of developing on Facebook. Each of these ways makes for a different platform of development. The term Facebook Platform in general just means accessing Facebook's APIs to access these two methods, but as you're developing, you'll first want to decide within Facebook Platform which path you want to take.

What you build on Facebook all depends on your strategy, your goals, and the time frame available to you. Over the course of building your application, there's a good chance you'll choose a number of different strategies. I share just a few strategies that I think you should consider as you're planning your application. In this section, I dive a little deeper into what you can do with these different Facebook Platforms.

Fishing where the fish are

A generally accepted principle in marketing is what marketers call “fishing where the fish are.” The idea is that as a marketer (or developer trying to market your application), in essence, you're fishing for those potential customers and users you want to bring into your application or Web site. It really makes no sense to go fishing and just wait for the fish to come to you. The most effective means for you to find new customers and users is to go out where they are and “fish where the fish are.”

In the early days of the Web, this was difficult to do. Marketers and Web site builders were stuck building Web sites and having to come up with their own means to advertise and bring ...