Shanti’s Dispatches

I called it about a month ago; it looks like Facebook has finally taken action and put an end to forced invites.

This is a really great move for Facebook and platform developers in general.

When competing for a user’s time, you are almost forced to use every tactic that your competitors are using.

If one app decides to engage in predatory practices, and their usage rate jumps ahead of yours because of this, you’ll be the one left holding the bag.

This new change levels the playing field and will give users a better experience all around.

The Facebook App Free Gifts is quite the viral application.

I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but pretty much the entire application is available for perusal / download via pastie, a tool commonly used by developers to share code snippets.

Some of the app code mirrored below:

// includes
require_once('/fbExchange/code/fbApps/coreLib/globalConfig.php'); // hard code to live config file, NOT beta!
require_once('facebook.php'); // from coreLib
require_once('/fbExchange/code/fbApps/freegifts/lib/lib.php'); // needs total rewrite

//Some facebook stuff
$facebook = new Facebook($api_key, $secret);
$facebook->require_frame();
$appUrl = "http://apps.facebook.com/freegifts";
$callbackUrl = "http://freegifts.fbexchange.com";

...

//Determine the page
if (isset($_GET['to']) && isset($_GET['from']))
	$page = “giftToGift”;
else if (isset($_GET['from']))
	$page = “sentGifts”;
else if (isset($_GET['to']))
	$page = “receivedGifts”;
else if ($_GET['action'] == “single”)
	$page = “singleGift”;
else if ($_GET['action'] == “valentines”)
	$page = “valentines”;
else if ($_GET['action'] == “track”)
	$page = “track”;
else if ($_GET['action'] == “stats”)
	$page = “stats”;
else if ($_GET['action'] == “settings”)
	$page = “settings”;
else
	$page = “default”;

Update: Zach from Free Gifts sent me a note explaining the situation. I’ve removed my mirror. This kind of thing can happen to the best of us. It’s also just a small portion of the app, not the entire thing.

I stumbled across the code via this Google search.

A little word to the wise: don’t pastie your entire application’s code… unless you intend for it to be open source, that is.

Getting a little tired of seeing this when adding / logging into Facebook apps. This is really hurting the Facebook App cause.

Now everytime you think about adding an app, you’re a little bit more hesitant because you’re worried it’s just another Ponzi scheme like Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail app doesn’t even let you play until you’ve invited a bunch of friends. No thanks. Optional friend spamming? Fine. But don’t extort my app invitations, thank you very much.

Oh and btw, Zeke still has dysentery.

Just came across this post which talks about automating Facebook interaction to perform a request in a Facebook app.

Their ruby code is here (much of it based originally off mine — which is so cool).

For the longest time I didn’t get open source… why anyone would give away their hard-earned time (in the form of code) to everyone else.

It’s not some hippie thing though. The benefits are:

* expands your “street cred” in the community
* allows other people to enhance what you’ve done, and possibly, contribute back to the project
* fosters even more giving back by growing pie — it’s not a zero-sum game, as many would believe

In my case, I’ve almost always already written the software that becomes open source. Without releasing it, the code would simply rot on the vine. Usually within 2-3 hours (though I’m getting better), I can have the code cleaned up, tests added (if applicable) and released as an open source project.

The original Facebook automation article is here: HOW TO: Automate Facebook Interaction using Ruby and WWW::Mechanize.

More recent open source work: Sexy Temp Passwords (rails plugin), Dynamic File Store (rails plugin), and The Hydra Project.