Taking Facebook Too Far

I have noticed, over the last couple of projects I have worked on, as well as in general within the Web Development industry, some frequently-asked-for features on Websites. Often the problem with these features, is that they are not suited for what the clients are trying to do with their own Websites, as well as the fact that they the clients are usually unaware of the other features that could be better used to accomplish the goals they have set out for their leap into the Internet space. The most frequent of these feature requests, is Facebook integration. In this article, I thought I would list a couple of these perceived necessities, and similarly, mention better alternatives where applicable.

Problem: Doing too much

More and more people approach Web developers with a Website they want created, and say that it has to have Facebook, because everyone else does it. Now firstly, Facebook isn’t something one simply attaches to the site and voila, its done. Facebook has many different types of features that can be integrated into Websites (most of which are unnecessarily difficult to make use of) and depending on the functionality these features offer, they can range from simple copy-and-paste jobs, to as painful as attempting to get intimate with a porcupine.

I am not going to argue the fact that Facebook is a very effective and viable marketing tool. However, it should be used WHERE AND WHEN IT WILL BE EFFECTIVE! Some of the sites people request to be developed, end up looking like Facebook itself. This is simply because they go overboard in trying to “socially market” their company, in the process losing their corporate identity. This isn’t limited to Facebook, but all Social Media, but because Facebook has the most varied set of features for social marketing, and is one of the most popular sites in the world, it tends to be abused the most.

Another big problem that arises in taking Facebook integration too far, is that developing functionality to take advantage of the more complex features, such as Facebook Connect, and Facebook Application development (Spaghetti Monster help me), the number of hours the project takes to be developed almost doubles in the case of a small to medium-sized site. This amounts to the client becoming grumpy due to the higher costs, and myself, the developer, getting suicidal due to having to develop for Facebook for more than the one hour I feel is healthy, each month. People just always seem to forget that most, if not all things, should be taken in moderation.

Solution: Vigilance

Do your research. Look at what the Social Media sites offer feature-wise, and limit your site to making use of one or two of them based on what would work best for your company. By not drowning your clients in Social Media, they’ll be more likely to take advantage of the ones you chose to provide, making them that much more effective.

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Problem: Facebook Connect

The last Facebook problem I will mention, is that Facebook Connect, in its ability to allow one’s site to automatically log people in depending on their Facebook IDs, is great in concept, but poorly implemented, and the reliance on Facebook for this functionality does not seem right from a privacy perspective, in my opinion at least. Clients should also realise that as popular as Facebook is, its API is buggy and confusing. Incompatibilities with older browsers such as Internet Explorer, as well as with more security-conscious browsers such as Safari, are commonplace, and this means that the client will end up paying for the time needed to find workarounds for these silly problems.

Solution: OpenID

At least in Facebook Connect’s case, the best solution is OpenID. OpenID allows you to create an ‘identity’ on the site of your choice (big companies like Google and Yahoo automatically supply OpenIDs to all registered users), and using this identity, you can log in to any site that supports the OpenID by simply supplying the Web address to your OpenID account. The site you are trying to log in to then redirects you to your OpenID account’s Web page, and you are asked to log in using your credentials for that OpenID account (say, your Gmail account’s details in the event that you used your Google OpenID), and whether you would like to grant the site you are logging in to permissions to obtain your personal details. Once you have finished that, you are redirected back to the original site, and you will be logged in each time you visit the site by simply supplying the same OpenID account Web address.

This allows you to have one account on the Website of your choice (it can even be your own), and then any other sites that you wish to create user accounts on can simply access it to obtain the information they require, granted you gave permission for them to do so. The two benefits to this are that a) you can choose who you wish to store your personal details with, and therefore you can be confident in the safety of your information and that your privacy will be respected by whoever you chose to host it, and b) the OpenID project is worked on by a large group of people, and is open source, meaning that if there were any security loopholes or possibilities that your information was being stolen by whoever created the code, others would know about it. In Facebook Connect’s case, both of these are not the true.

OpenID support can be found on many large sites nowadays, but it hasn’t penetrated the smaller site base as much as of yet, though it is increasing in popularity slowly.

Conclusion

There is news that Google is looking to create a site to compete with Facebook in the near future. If that is the case, I definitely look forward to at least the possibility that integrating Facebook-esque functionality into Websites will be slightly less painful for Web developers like myself.

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