

Ask HN: Upsides and Downsides of Facebook Integration - hendler

Dear hackers,<p>No one here can sanely deny the power of Facebook. Whether you market a whopper, print pictures, plant a garden, or send gifts - the opportunities seem boundless. So far, Facebook also seems fairly open - open apis, access to their users, open source software.<p>As my company considers different levels of integration with Facebook, I would love to hear opinions and experiences about whether Facebook has been a great opportunity, or something less beneficial for your projects.<p>-- EDIT --<p>More specifically, I'm interested in opinions on the difference of "owning" your users vs. letting facebook manage identity and the network.<p>If a freemium startup has anything of value - I would think it's "their" users.<p>The discussion between creating a closed, gated community and opening up is finished I think. Open up.  But facebook presents other opportunities and other risks that I'd like to hear more about.<p>-- end EDIT --<p>Thank you!
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Spyckie
A suggestion - your question is too vague. At the very least, tell us if
you're looking at Facebook for mass marketing or integration with your site.

Without any context, I'm going to assume you're asking about Facebook as a
time waster. It does have tremendous power to draw people who already waste a
lot of time to waste more time. In this aspect, the opportunities here are
terrible because this market is already flooded with games, social
comparisons, or super poking your friends to death.

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hendler
Thanks for the feedback.

The question is vague. I'm most interested in shared user-bases. Facebook owns
the network of users, and apps feed from this network. I'll try to clarify my
question.

~~~
Spyckie
Since I feel bad about no one answering -

You already recognized that opening up is the trend. Using Facebook is really
about the target audience that you're going for - Facebook users have
particular expectations and habits online. You get the expectations of the
user base by associating yourself with Facebook. This may be useful for a fun
application, or even a social application, but beyond that and it gets
complicated.

For instance, I wouldn't connect any business application to Facebook; linked-
in is opening up their api and it may be a better market space for business
applications (even though I dislike that crowd). A business application
connected to Facebook is for the wrong crowd, and won't take advantage of the
viral aspect of using a large existing user base. People also don't look for
business applications on Facebook.

Think about your target audience first, and then go after them where they
congregate.

