[Gobiner]

I couldn't agree more with this article (though I sadly can't say 'no' to Facebook development). I recently did a tiny amount of Facebook integration into a site and it was horrific.

All I wanted to do was add a `Like` button that would broadcast to the clicker's friends timeline. What could be simpler? Just copy and paste their code onto your page and you're done. Right?

The second sentence on their documentation page says "when the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user's friends' News Feed with a link back to your website."

But it turns out that's not true. It turns out you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get that behavior. The documentation for their simplest and most used integration feature couldn't go one paragraph without falsehood.

[bemmu]

So when you like something, it doesn't actually appear in friends' newsfeeds? Elaborations please.

[far33d]

It does - I think the OP is referring to all the open graph data you need to add to your page to have this functionality work properly.

[Gobiner]

Yup, the whole point of putting a `Like` button your page is so that site visitors can broadcast your page to their friends. However, to cause that broadcast to actually occur you have to put a bunch of Open Graph meta tags on your page and also (I think?) have a registered Facebook Application to go along with your site.

There's no place that's documented except for the developer forums.

[steve19]

> also (I think?) have a registered Facebook Application to go along with your site.

Can you please elaborate on this? I thought it was just the meta tags that were needed?

[kingnothing]

For what it's worth, it's only five lines of meta tags that are well documented.