I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
ryanwaggoner.com
I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
1–10 of 77 posts
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#2I, and several people I know, have been in this situation before. Facebook seems to have very little commitment to backwards-compatibility and comprehensive documentation.
On a more general note, I’d strongly recommend against building your entire business around a single platform.
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#3I recently ported my app back to the old Javascript API; I wish I could say that it was for the superior older documentation, but it was actually because the new API randomly stopped returning my calls from time to time.
All of the big moneymakers' apps are built on the older stuff, so I figure when it breaks, it gets a bit more love.
The documentation is still shoddy, the Bing-powered documentation search is abysmal, and when things don't work I don't understand why. I'd have happily paid a few hundred dollars to be part of the developer program and have a contact over there, but they killed that. Ah well.
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#4This is Bret Taylor's Graph API - the concept simplified the API a lot, and companies like Freebase copied it for their own data. Too bad it is not working...
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#5I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels this way about their documentation. I don't make Facebook apps all the time. I've made a couple. Each time a client has me make one I have to spend hours trying to gather info about whether a requirement is possible because the docs suck.
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#6Their API woes lead to problems with other components they offer. Their original iphone sdk component was one of the more polished freely available objective c components out there. Their updated version using that relies on the updated API's is a step backwards in functionality, ease of use and documentation.
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#7This also applies to login via Facebook Connect. They change the rules on this sometimes, and don't give much warning beyond a post on their dev blog.
Guess who your users blame when all of a sudden they can't log into your site anymore with their Facebook account?
We user RPX/Janrain to deal with this, but we still get burned sometimes nonetheless.
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#8Facebook documentation SUCKS!
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#9I think they do this on purpose - rapidly changing apis, and having poor or overly verbose documentation is a way to weed out all but the largest development companies, thereby reducing support costs, and allowing partnerships with the big companies that survive. It's right from microsoft's playbook.
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#10It seems like a cultural issue. We were at an event on Tuesday where they let us know about a host of API changes relating to apps specifically, but when I got back and emailed asking for some documentation (even anything internal), all I got was a "we'll get back to you."
Ironically (or maybe not), part of the presentation was a slide featuring a workgroup with a "Done is better than perfect" poster. Well, yeah, but when you're running a platform service...