Extreme Overhaul to Application About Pages
January 24, 2008
Facebook just announced a major improvement made to application about pages. About pages now act like Facebook Pages, enabling application owners to customize page layouts, add & remove applications, acquire fans, track visitors, and much more.
The reason for the change is most likely due to many developers requesting a change to the about page such that users can submit reviews in a better fashion. Thankfully, Facebook listened not only by adding a dedicated ratings section, but also by providing developers and application owners much more control over numerous aspects.
One of the other notable benefits is that applications can now have fans. Previously, applications could not get in touch with users to notify them of updates. To work around this, some developers resorted to creating a separate Facebook Page in order to track fans and provide updates to them. Now, because individual applications can have fans, application administrators can directly contact those who have joined as a fan.
Application owners who have already acquired fans on a separate Facebook Page can contact Facebook directly at app-about-page@publists.facebook.com to request their fans be transfered into the application. The email should include the application ID or application key, the page ID, and the developer’s user ID.
These changes have provided developers with more insight into their applications by linking directly to the Facebook Insights page, which provides a graphic overview of activity for the past several weeks. Additionally, HTTP status code data can be found in the same location.
For those interested in interfacing with application data directly, the API can now be used in the same manner as was previously made available to Facebook Pages. Facebook provided the following details on the topic.
As for the Facebook API, you can use the Pages.getInfo API call to retrieve information regarding your About Page, but it returns information for these fields only:
name,pic_big,pic_small,pic,pic_square,pic_large,type, andhas_added_app. The other fields are specific to standard Facebook Pages and depend on the different Page categories. If you use the Fql.query API call to query the FQL page table, it returns the same values as the Pages.getInfo call. The Pages.isAppAdded and Pages.isAdmin methods behave normally, while Pages.isFan does not work on About pages. The Pages.isAdmin call returns the current developers of an application. Since Application About Pages cannot have a Mini-Feed, Feed.publishTemplatizedAction does not work for About pages.
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