Invite Facebook friends from Sencha Touch app

Recently I’ve been working on a Sencha Touch project which is based on facebook api. A very simple feature is to invite facebook friends to this app. I was ransacking into the facebook api docs, other websites to figure out how to do it from Sencha Touch. There is a PhoneGap plugin for this but we’re not going to use PhoneGap for this one. I need a very simple php based solution. First I tried a lot to do it from php sdk. Cos according to the application’s design the user will select his friends from a sencha touch list, click a button and the selected records will be passed to backend php script via Ext.Ajax.request. After spending several hours on this I figured out it is not possible to invite friends to app from php sdk! Grrr..

Now the only way left is javascript. Most people are still using fbml for this and I tried it first, it didn’t work and you know fbml is deprecated by facebook anyway. Next javascript sdk. Requests Dialog is the proper way of doing this.

function sendRequestToManyRecipients() {
  FB.ui({method: 'apprequests',
    message: 'My Great Request',
  }, requestCallback);
}

From iPhone this won’t look good. You need to add display:’touch’ with it and call the function from your sencha touch button’s handler.

function sendRequestToManyRecipients() {
  FB.ui({method: 'apprequests',
    message: 'My Great Request',
    display:'touch',
  }, requestCallback);
}

That’s it! Here is how it looks from iPhone 4:

Tags | facebook, invite friends, invite to app, JavaScript, PHP, Requests Dialog, sdk, Sencha Touch, source code

Buxter facilitates direct payment system among Facebook friends

Popular social networking site Facebook has allowed small payments system which can be shared directly among Facebook friends through an application called Buxter. But this application only handles its transactions in Euros or US dollars and requires 5% conversion fee for other currencies at the point of upload to a Buxter account. Transactions between Buxter accounts are free to make and receive but a 1.9% commission fee, minimum 2 euros or 3 dollar or 2 pounds is charged to move the money to another source such as a bank account.

The application is designed for small payments (a maximum of 50 euros can be held in any one account) and transactions can only be made among people who are friends on Facebook.

Already More than 13 million people across the world have Buxter accounts. ClickandBuy is the company who is behind this application. They believe people would use the service to pay each other for shared expense.

Tags | buxter, facebook, money transfer in facebook, mybuxter, real money, Social network

Zynga’s revenue has touched the sky in 2009

Zynga is the number one social gaming company on the web. Popular social online games by zynga are Cafe World, Dragon Wars, FarmVille, Fashion Wars, FishVille, Mafia Wars, PetVille, Pirates, Roller Coaster, Scramble, Special Forces, Street Racing, Vampires, Word Twist, YoVille, Zynga Poker and so on. No download is required for Zynga games, and Zynga uses Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Hi5, and iphone as platform for these games and social networking.

When Zynga got 5 million users its goal had been to get to 12 million daily active users by the end of the year 2009, but now they have ended 2009 with around 65 million users.

Zynga’s revenue has increased like boom with its users. According to Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, ZYnga’s revenue run rate has increased by additional 246 percent to 260 percent in the year 2009. So, Zynga’s annualized revenue run rate is now more than $300 million in 2009. And, earlier this month, the company closed a $180 million round of funding.

Based on preliminary sales trend on virtual goods, Zynga will likely do at least $200 million in revenues this calendar year through virtual farm games only.

Tags | facebook, game, games, Social network, zynga

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter may face more sophisticated attacks in 2010

McAfee warned that Social networks will face increasingly sophisticated hacker attacks in 2010. McAfee said, “The explosion of applications on Facebook and other services will be an ideal vector for cybercriminals, who will take advantage of friends trusting friends to click links they might otherwise treat cautiously,”

In its 2010 Threat Predictions report, McAfee expected that hackers were expected to try to take advantage of the proliferation of URL shortening services such as bit.ly and tinyurl.com. It has also expected to see increased threats to banking security, Adobe products (especially Acrobat Reader and Flash), Chrome computer operating system by Google, and Microsoft Office applications and email remained vulnerable for its increasing popularity among individual users, corporations, and government institutions. However, the Santa Clara, California, computer security firm said that they are expecting to see an increase in the effectiveness of law enforcement to fight back against cybercrime in 2010.

Tags | 2010, cybercrime, facebook, Social network, twitter