FBML Essentials

Chapter 1. “Hello Friends”

The “Hello World” for Social Development

I generally cringe when I see “Hello World” examples in modern books on software development. It’s been used so often that it almost doesn’t teach anything anymore. However, because the social Web brings a new layer to web development, I’d like to show you a new layer to the “Hello World” example. A social application is all about interaction—it’s about establishing a conversation with your friends.

When writing social applications, you have to consider the fact that, in a way, you’re having a conversation with the people you are writing software for. Not only must your application talk to your users, but it must also allow them to talk to you and to each other. Simply taking an existing website and putting it on a social site such as Facebook will not bring you millions of users in weeks or months like the apps described in this chapter. Your Facebook application must give users the ability to share their actions with friends, broadcast to the world, find people with similar interests, and most of all, identify themselves in ways they never could before on traditional websites. Instead of asking yourself, “How will my users utilize my application?,” you should now ask yourself, “How will my users’ friends utilize my application?”

The following list shows some examples of several applications on Facebook, all with 100,000 daily active users or more at the time of this writing. Examine them and see if you can figure out why they have become as popular as they are. Then, apply those features to your own Facebook application design:

iLike (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2413267546&b)

I can’t tell you the number of clients who come to me asking for an application “just like iLike.” iLike has all the elements of a good Facebook app, allowing you to track the songs you’re listening to and share them with your friends on Facebook. This is the ultimate example of an external website that successfully integrated into Facebook.

Scrabulous (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=3052170175&b)

The ultimate social game on Facebook! This app allows you to challenge your Facebook friends to Scrabble™, track your progress, and share your progress with others. This is something you could invite your grandma to play.

Likeness (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2405948328&b)

Find out what celebrity, singer, or artist you are like, and then share it with your friends.

Honesty Box (http://apps.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2552096927&b)

This app provides an anonymous way for your friends to say things about you without you knowing who said them.

Circle of Friends (http://apps.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2270425051&b)

Find new friends with similar likes and interests, and share things with them.

As you can see from these examples, simplicity is key when integrating social elements into your application. We are going to start simple, too: we’ll create a simple application using just FBML that says “hello” to you and allows you to invite your friends to use it. The application we create here can be found at http://apps.facebook.com/fbmlessentials. All examples throughout this book will be added as components of this Facebook application so that you can see the results of what we are developing.