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Retrieving and sending information to/from social networks

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:39 am
by Lysistrate
I'm working on a project for which I need a function which will enable the users of my site to invite their friends on networks such as facebook, myspace, twitter etc to come and use my site.

All I really need is someway to retrieve their friends information from these networks and giving them the ability to, presumably via a mail form, send a note which will then contain a link to my site. Said link should contain a referal variable which identifies for my server which user sent the invitation when a "friend" follows that link to my site and then signs up. This is so that I will be able to keep statistics on how many people any one user has managed to get signed up on my site.

I've been poking around the facebook developer forum to get a hang on the API usage, but for some reason I can't seem to figure it out. I suppose it should be added that I'm quite new to php so the possibility exists that the answer is staring me right in the face, and I just can't see it through all the syntax ;)


Any help is deeply apreciated.

Re: Retrieving and sending information to/from social networks

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:53 am
by jaoudestudios
I would be surprised if facebook gave you an easy way to do this, because it would imply you are trying to steal their users and the user's friends.

Re: Retrieving and sending information to/from social networks

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:58 am
by Lysistrate
Well it seems possible since roughly what I'm looking for is being used by many facebook apps, apps which are constructed by independent coders. The only real difference is that I want the information displayed on my site, rather than redirecting the user to facebook.

Re: Retrieving and sending information to/from social networks

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 8:00 am
by jaoudestudios
These apps run within facebook, so are considered to improve/add/expand to the functionality of facebook.

Yours is an external app and what you do with that info facebook can not control - which is why they would prevent this. I hope you can do it, but like I said I dont think facebook will advertise the possibility. You could right some clever code to do it - few regular expressions etc.

Re: Retrieving and sending information to/from social networks

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 9:21 am
by Lysistrate
Something similar to what I'm looking for is done when you first join twitter.com. They access the people in your gmail, I think, and asks you to add them as friends on twitter.

Re: Retrieving and sending information to/from social networks

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 9:35 am
by jaoudestudios
All I am suggesting is: it is more available with gmail, msn, yahoo etc... because they provide a totally different application/service to what you want to do, so they dont see it as a threat, but facebook might, as it will be an online application.