Tonight Facebook has announced that the launch of their “first social widget” for Facebook Connect. It’s a comment box which enables blogs, photo galleries, or other sites, to add comments to their site quickly. This is surprisingly the first public widget we’ve seen Facebook release. Contrast that with Google Friend Connect which immediately launched a community widget for user’s sidebars.
This comment widget theoretically competes with numerous blog widgets that are already out there. Unlike traditional Facebook comments, this widget enables developers to customize the background color, text color, and other attributes via CSS. Developers can theoretically integrate this service directly into their own system by using the comments.get API call.
Those that choose to enable the comments widget also have access privacy settings for each widget on an individual or global basis. The company has also stated that this is “just one of many social widgets” that will integrate with Connect. Does that mean we should expect the company to release more widgets in the coming weeks and months?
Not necessarily as they were referring to existing widget services but I would bet that we’ll see more regardless of what third-parties (or as Facebook calls “fourth parties”) have to offer. If you want more details, go check out Facebook’s post from tonight about the new service.
Update
One huge feature of this widget is that comments posted on your profile in reference to a given comment thread will also show up on your site. This is a huge advantage, mimicking much of the functionality provided by a couple FriendFeed and Twitter plugins that are scattered around the web. On this site in particular, I’ll receive comments here as well as comments on my profile. It would be great if that information was made accessible on my site.
There are some inherent privacy issues with this feature though. I’ll be exploring that in another post but this is definitely a much welcomed feature.
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Goodie! Off to try it out now since I was having problems with the other widgets out there.. I just hope hope hope hope it works!
Thanks! =)
-Nik
Comment by Nikolas Tjhin — February 19, 2009 @ 5:34 pm
I would like to hear hidden privacy issues as well..
http://facebookster.com/
Comment by Razeen Ilyas — February 19, 2009 @ 9:42 pm
Cool, ya… razeen is correct .. what about the privacy issues … this actually make info (comments) travels faster than we expect.
Comment by Facebook User — February 19, 2009 @ 11:43 pm
yeap…I also manage to integrate on my blog successfully!
http://blog.jomlr.com/facebook-reverts-terms-of-s...
Comment by Facebook User — February 19, 2009 @ 11:48 pm
This is actually pretty cool.
Comment by Skylark — February 19, 2009 @ 11:09 pm
Hi, where do we find the "class domain receiver file"? I got lost after creating a new app on FB for my comments box.
Thanks!
Lee
Comment by Lee — February 20, 2009 @ 1:13 am
i saw a smiley in the video!
Comment by Zafarali Ahmed — February 20, 2009 @ 5:51 am
wow that security check is wicked
it'll be good for those who don't have a comment feature but I'm not so sure about other site. I really don't care about people's real names I just don't want spam.
Comment by owen — February 20, 2009 @ 6:20 am
this is gonna be huge for facebook. see my take at adsonfacebook.wordpress.com
Comment by AdsOnFacebook — February 20, 2009 @ 9:09 am
http://facebookmania.net/2009/01/02/facebook-plug...
I have integrated perfectly…but i can'y reduce the size of the box comment … help me please!!
Comment by Vincenzo Piromalli — February 20, 2009 @ 10:18 am
It is a cool widget
Comment by Guzi Guzu — February 20, 2009 @ 12:07 pm
Yes it is
Comment by Daniel — February 20, 2009 @ 12:09 pm
Any sites that are already use it?
Comment by Daniel Kunntz — February 20, 2009 @ 12:11 pm
not too bad
Comment by Ping Ding — February 20, 2009 @ 2:18 pm
Any idea how to even begin editing CSS for the widget?
Also, how might I add a counter to track comments (as does WordPress' inherent commenting system?
I've got it set up with testing here. Would love some advice.
http://homeofficeenvy.com/wordpress-mods/facebook...
Comment by HOE — February 20, 2009 @ 10:45 pm
Very excellent. I added this to my photoblog… Seems to be working fine – example at http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-tutorial/
For the time being, I suppose I have to maintain two different comment systems on the blog, since there are a lot old legacy comments that I should not delete. How are other people handling this?
Comment by Trey Ratcliff — February 22, 2009 @ 12:10 pm
Unfortunately, seems like I'm having tons of problem with it.. I had to take it out =/
Comment by Nikolas Tjhin — February 23, 2009 @ 7:16 am
The comments are not showing up in the WP back-end as new comments, and they’re not going into the feed which populates our food site’s latest comments component. Anybody got any ideas. I like this feature, but not as much if it doesn’t integrate into the comment feed of WordPress.
Comment by Murray — February 24, 2009 @ 7:33 pm
I have the same problem as Murray. Anyone figure out how to integrate these comments into WordPress comment counts and backend?
Comment by Javier — April 21, 2009 @ 12:17 pm
what a great idea !
Comment by Emmanuel Valluche — April 30, 2009 @ 6:26 am
I would like to get Facebook Connect working like yours on this site….. how did you do that?!?!
Comment by idale — May 19, 2009 @ 6:58 am
how to put it on blogger-based blog?
Comment by edo — June 23, 2009 @ 12:59 am
How i can put this to my site? i dont understands
Comment by connect — September 8, 2009 @ 10:48 am