A blog about User Interface, User Experience, Design, Flash, Product management and all that goes in between.

I just finished connecting my blog and few other pages on my site to Facebook, to enjoy some sharing goodness of the social community, as well as Facebook’s ‘insight’ statistics – why not enjoy what is given for free right?

I had some setbacks and strugles along the way, thought it might save you some time (and wasted ‘Likes’ too) to write few tips down. It will not be a full tutorial, instead I will focus on some oddities on the Facebook side:

First tip will be: Do not implement until you REALLY understand what your options are and what exactly you want to do. Facebook offers two main options for adding a ‘Like’ button to your page/site/blog, one is IFRAME, second is XFBML. The iframe option is as simple as adding a line in your html source, and will get you going in seconds. The xfbml is based on their Javascript SDK, and sports the Facebook ‘insight’ statistics via open graph, but requires few preliminary steps which are kinda tricky as the documentation is fairly sparse. Obviously we would prefer the xfbml option.

In order to use xfbml you will need an AppID, which require you to set up an application, to do that you will have to add the Developer application to your Facebook Profile.

Then, you have to activate you developer account – you have to give you cell number, after which you will receive a code via sms to submit.

Then you can create an application in Facebook here.
* This page has a strange behavior, you will define your application name, pass a captcha and receive an Error page:
“Sorry, an error has occurred.
We’re working on getting this fixed as soon as we can.”

But if you look at the column on the right in the developers page, you will see that the application was actually created:
(Facebook, are you serious about that? is this some kind of a test?) I ended up creating about 10 applications, read countless forums threads until I found it by mistake!

After that you can start implementing, follow the instruction here which are pretty simple.

Since I thought Facebook application creation service is down, I started with the iframe version, obviously a mistake as all the ‘Likes’ I got were dumped once I connected the xfbml. damn.

Good luck and may the force be with you..

Dealing with ideas and startups, we get to talk with entrepreneurs, VCs and BizDev guys, very often we are asked what is the technological edge in the idea? what will differentiate it from imitations and prevent competitors from copying the idea? hmm, how about nothing?

In todays reality, what makes a product hot often has nothing to do with pioneering technology, what was Flickr’s technological edge? what was YouTube’s? yes, yes, I know, both these examples have deep technological aspects in their solution/product/service, but Flickr really did not invent something new in terms of technology, neither did YouTube. for each example I can name a better reason for succeeding other than a technological edge, mainly Timing, face it, many of those web2.0 companies are really implementing OLD ideas, in a better circumstances, as today the users are more willing to accept & participate in “advanced” concepts.

So what is the importance of a technological edge in the chances of a new idea to succeed ?

Since It is simply not necessary today to have huge development departments in order to make applications people want, it is time to omit the technology from the phrase – the edge may be the user experience in your product (e.g. iPod), integrating well with other services (mashup), or being open for enhancements from third party players (open API), and more important – successfully integrating these in your business plans & objectives.

I value the user experience the most because this is what counts for users at the end, I use Flickr, Skype, de.icio.us, because it is easy and convenient, not because they use this platform and not another, and this counts for success – how many users are actually using it, and what impact it has on our life.