6 Comments »
If you are one of the almost 2,000 people that have joined the AllFacebook community via our community widget on the right hand side of this site, there’s no doubt you’ve been noticing some issues in the past 24 hours. Our Facebook Connect implementation has gone crazy even though we didn’t change anything. I’ve pinged Facebook to see what’s going on but I’ve yet to hear anything back.
We’re working to resolve the problem but honestly there is very little I can do aside from disabling the widget all together (which is what I might do if we can’t resolve it in the next few hours). We’ve already had an interesting experience with Facebook Connect on this site with user names not always displaying and links to profiles not displaying accurately. Additionally, all of the registered users are not being accounted for in Facebook’s application metrics.
If this site keeps refreshing for you, try logging out of Facebook before visiting the site. Alternatively, wait a few hours until we’ve fixed the problem! Thanks for understanding!
We’re having the same problem on the socialfly blog. Connect is… difficult sometimes.
This has been fixed now. I apologize for the issues that bug has caused.
so overall - is facebook connect worth the hassle?
i’m in the planning stages of a news portal project and the client is very reluctant to allow ANY commenting on their new site… my suggestion was to have facebook take care of authentication via fb connect, offering it as the ONLY option for leaving a comment…
anyone willing to comment on this suggestion? do’s, don’ts, gotchas?
Luka - It depends.
I’m going to guess that since your client is reluctant to allow any comments on their site, they might have a more late adopter mindset, e.g. wait til the dust settles and every last glitch is sorted out. If that is the case, just from your own perspective it might not be beneficial to push the latest and greatest tech to the unwilling.
That said, Connect is fantastic - portable REAL identities reduces the anonymous commenter problems that plague most blogs and sites, and the lack of need for username/password leads to higher conversion, lets you track your users over time, and makes building a community easier (provided that is what your client wants). Connect has a lot of promise and the best UI for portable identity.
However, even with official and maintained plugins like those for Wordpress / Drupal / etc you’re still going to experience glitches or design constraints that you might want to wait to see mature. Read up on the notes on the plugins before you choose to adopt (e.g. http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/WP-FBConnect). Connect is a very young technology and while it’s been deployed successfully in many places such as CNN’s inauguration coverage, today’s glitch is an example of what you get with any bleeding edge technology.
My company Socialfly (http://social-fly.com) is using Connect for both our blog (easy, nothing fancy) and our application (lots of challenges getting it to work in all cases). It’s been an interesting ride thus far, but for us having the technology is critical.
Nick
Ps Ronnie- thanks for the quick response. Re-enabling the plugin now
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
Hi !!
I am Piter Kokoniz. Just want to tell, that I’v found your blog very interesting
And want to ask you: what was the reasson for you to start this blog?
Sorry for my bad english:)
Tnx!
Your Piter