The Facebook Journal

Here’s a little story about the comment importing problems we’ve encountered with the popular Disqus system.

We started using Disqus back in 2009 when we first launched this website and all was going good until we decided to change the domain name. After the change we’ve used all the tools that Disqus provides to merge/sync/import/export comments onto this new domain. We’ve contacted them directly, indirectly, taken their advice, ignored their advice, did whatever they told us to do, even did the exact opposite… Nothing works! All the comments from 2009 and the beginning of 2010 are lost! Well not exactly lost (they’re still here, in form of regular WordPress comments), but there’s no way to get them to show up on Disqus.

That left us with 2 options. Either to get rid of Disqus and use the horrible WordPress commenting system (horrible, even with all the add-ons and plugins), or to just forget about the comments and start with a fresh install of Disqus.

We’ve tried both of the options and let me tell you this… Disqus wins. I apologise to all of you who’ve lost you comments, but please blame Disqus not us! Believe me, we’ve done all we could and believe me you don’t want to use any other commenting system!

Facebook Journal is giving you the opportunity to write about your own Facebook app/game!
You can post a review of your new app or game, write about recent updates or improvements. To do so, create an account on The Facebook Journal here, log in and start posting! Your posts will be reviewed by our team and should be live in about 1 business day.

You can even include one Google AdSense ad at the bottom of your post!

So what are you waiting for? Write your posts, increase traffic to your apps/games, spread the word and start earning money on The Facebook Journal today!

For more info and tips on how to write, click here.

I’m happy to announce the release of the iPhone Web App version of The Facebook Journal.

To use the web app, just navigate to thefacebookjournal.com on your iPhone’s web browser. The app represents a streamlined version of the website with an interface  specifically optimized for the iPhone.

For more info about the web app, visit Apple’s Web Apps gallery.

Update: According to Facebook “The performance and volume of API calls has stabilized at close to normal level”.

The Facebook Platform is down again with the Platform Live Status page all in red. There have also been reports that the entire Facebook network was down as well.
FBML based apps are currently performing the worst and a small subset of canvas apps are not being redirected to their Callback URLs.
It seems that all this happened just after this week’s weekly code-push .

We’ll keep you updated as the situation evolves.

Facebook announced about their new Privacy Settings earlier today. Facebook says that the changes are made to simplify the Facebook privacy settings and give users more control,  but according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation these changes are made to push users to publicly share even more information than before.

For app developers these changes will be very useful. Users won’t be able to hide information such as gender and friend lists (and other Publicly Available Information – PAI) from apps, they can’t opt out of the Facebook API (by the “Do not share any information about me” setting) anymore and even if a user hasn’t granted permission to any apps the PAI of the user will still be available through the friends of the user who use the application.

According to Chris Cox (VP, Product Management) “everyone” will be the new default for status updates, which will make Facebook more like Twitter and give greater access to information for developers. This means if Facebook allowed Google to pull user status updates for its new real-time search,  Facebook could have replaced and even eliminated Twitter.

Below is a video demonstrating these new changes.

Google announced today, at their Search event,  that its new real-time search will also include status updates from Public Profile Pages, aka Facebook Pages.

No word yet if it will include Application Profiles or not, but for now it certainly won’t include user Profile updates.

This can really increase the significance of Facebook Pages and events like the streaming of Alicia Keys’ new album on her Facebook fan page can be accessible (and searchable) for a broader audience.

Google Realtime Search

Are you a developer on Facebook? Have you created the most amazing Facebook Application or game but nobody knows about it yet?
Ask us to review your app today!

In the submission page, make sure you describe your application and tell us why do you think it has the potential to become the next killer app on Facebook. Describe all of its features in detail and most importantly include the link!

Good luck!

We’re giving you (our first readers) the opportunity to form the future of Fappside.

What would you like to see more of on Fappside? Is it reviews, platform news, tutorials, all of them or maybe something very different?

Now you can vote and have your say on the future of Fappside!

In addition, we’d always like to hear from you, be it news tips, comments or suggestions.

The Facebook Journal is looking for talented writers who would like to get published and reach our ever-growing tech-oriented audience. If you have a blog, have written for blogs before or even if you are new to blogging but you know a lot about Facebook, you can become a published author on The Facebook Journal and even earn some cash.

Here are the categories in which you can contribute:

Platform News
Application/Game Reviews
Application/Game News

Benefits:

Reach to our ever-growing tech-oriented audience

Your own Google Adsense Ad on your posts that will let you generate income from your content

The Facebook Jounral is new, but it is being heavily promoted among people interested in Facebook Platform Development. Writing for The Facebook Jounal will let you make a name for yourself and also generate income on your posts. We expect our writers to write a minimum of 1 post a week. All content will be subject to moderation but you are free to write just about anything concerning the above mentioned categories.

To become a writer, please fill in the Writer Application Form.

[Photo: Flickr - Athena]

As Don wrote in a post yesterday, Facebook is having a hard time sticking to the dates they’ve set in the Developer Roadmap. Although, we’ve heard that Facebook is planning to end the Verified Apps program today, still there are no news yet about the new Email feature that was promised to go live in November.

Pete Bratach, who is a technical writer at Facebook and according to his tag-line ”…likes keeping you up to date” didn’t mention the email feature at all in his November 2009 Platform News post today.

It’s a good thing they’ve released that Platform Live Status page where developers get notified about the condition of the Platform. Ever since it was released some major problems have been reported including a severely degraded performance of the Platform, which affected mainly FBML based applications, and problems with the Quick Transitions feature (which is still not fixed, opposite of what the Platform Live Status is saying). Let’s just hope it is all connected with with the upcoming redesign or the roll-outs of the new features and that we will have somewhat of a stable platform for the beginning of the new year.