Announcing: Facebook Integration
News flash: CrowdVine isn’t the only site on the Internet. We’re not even the only social network. We know this. We do!
So, you’re going to a conference soonish. This conference is smart enough to have set up a CrowdVine. Maybe you’re going to Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco (where you’ll see Tony and myself). Perhaps you’re heading to Miami next month for the 2008 IA Summit, or Amsterdam for ApacheCon.
You want to use us to figure out who do you want to meet when you get there. You want to arrange meetups or whatever. But, the thing is, you’re a person who can speak in complete sentences and doesn’t smell bad. At least, not so bad people run away from you. So you also already have friends that are going to be there. You don’t want to spend too much time reconnecting with them on CrowdVine.
What am I describing? The Social Graph Problem, which has been discussed quite a bit more intelligently than I’m capable of on my best day elsewhere.
So, we’ve taken some small steps already. If you’re a frequent conference goer and you’ve already defined your friends on a different CrowdVine, you’ll see a “import from other crowdvines” link under your “My Network” tab.
Now, we’ve done a Facebook importer. Just click “import from facebook” under the “My Network” tab and we’ll send you over to Facebook. The first time, you’ll be asked to re-enter your CrowdVine username and password so we can associate your Facebook account, and then you’ll see the FB friends that are also on the network you came from.
Easy, right? Also, why aren’t Tony and I friends?
Caveat: At this point, we don’t support our OpenID logins on the Facebook end. I know. It’s on the to do list.
Update: We just added OpenID support to the importer.
So, enjoy! Also, this isn’t the end of the work we want to do in this space. You name it, we want to be able to import your friends through it. Stay tuned, etc.
Tags: conferences, facebook, features, socialgraph
March 21st, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Good explanation, but I still want to have lunch, Tony! Thursday or Friday? :)
March 21st, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Next Friday?
March 22nd, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Tony, this is a good step forward, I really like what you’ve done with CrowdVine. It def has some cool features. Acknowledging that there are other social networks is an awesome awesome step.
But what if you created an FB app that let you have CrowdVine functionality integrated into the FB event page that might already be set up. What drives me, and everyone else, nuts about what is currently happening is that some events have FOUR places to sign up. Such is the case for the various BarCampBanks coming up in the next three weeks. For instance, BarCampBankSF has an event wiki, a Facebook event page, an EventBrite payment page, and also a CrowdVine page. Nevermind an Upcoming page. Each of these sites has their pluses and minuses. Anyone can put anything on the wiki. That’s a handy thing to have. Facebook deals great with sign ups, attendance and declines, and is REALLY easy to spread the word to others (both in direct invites, and indirectly thru the newsfeed), but can’t handle payments which EventBrite does just fine. The bummer is that not everyone is on Facebook yet, and the idea stops some people cold. I really like the functionality you’ve built into CrowdVine, but am wondering if it could operate more like a plug-in to Facebook (like Dopplr) and give it’s added functionality to Facebook events, rather than having all my FB data imported into Crowdvine. or at least some other type of synergy between the two so that I don’t have to “duplicate” my actions on both sites.
Facebook also treats people as unique individuals, rather than your “import” model, which treats events as individual, but then duplicate and clones oneself for multiple events. A person should be able to simply attend multiple events. That way, you could even have a record of events you attended in the past, and others you’re attending in the future, providing a more complete view of the person.
April 12th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
FaceBook integration .. sounds great! This is a good step forward. Acknowledging that there are other social networks is an awesome awesome step.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Is there any plans on API’s. I have a couple of sites this would be perfect for. Two are intranets - inside firewalls.
Thanks,
Tom
May 8th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Hi Tom, we definitely have plans for APIs although the thing most people want is already available: data portability. We export RSS, OPML, vcard, microformats, and FOAF in just about every place that we can think of. Is there something in particular you’re looking for?
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
[...] for people they already know or to find people to invite. You may already be familiar with our Facebook friend suggest feature. This is similar, except now we’ve extended it to CSV or vCard address book files, [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:47 am
check this out…
this is mine…