How to effortlessly inject your content into Facebook, using Ning

In a previous post I discussed Facebook's new platform approach, and described it as a turbocharged way to inject new content and features into Facebook from external services.

And I described at length some of the complexities involved in doing so, including scaling.

Tonight, my own company, Ning, released a new service that makes it trivially easy to inject your content -- videos, photos, and music -- into Facebook in such a way that:

• Facebook users can add your content to their profile pages with one click.
• Your content can then spread virally throughout the Facebook user base, and beyond.
• Your content is branded with your name and/or logo, and that branding persists no matter where your content goes, on or off Facebook. Users who click on your name/logo go to the home of your content, not some other service.
• You barely have to do anything -- everything happens automatically, and everything is run from our servers, so you don't need to worry about performance or scaling even when lots of people are looking at your content.

Enough with the bullet points -- here's a screencast:

Missing screencast here!

In a nutshell, it works like this:

• Create a social network for the topic of your choice on Ning -- it's fast, easy, and free, and other people have already done it more than 65,000 times. This gives you a space in which you can upload your content -- videos, photos, and music.
• Upload away.
• Activate our automatic Facebook support as shown in the screencast -- here's a full-screen version of that same screencast to make it really easy to follow along. (Once you have a social network on Ning, activation of this feature happens from the Facebook Promotion link from your Manage tab.)

That's it -- your videos, photos, and music can now be introduced into Facebook by any user and spread throughout Facebook and beyond.

As far as we're aware, this is the first time anyone can create an application on Facebook without knowing any code or setting up an application on your own servers -- and really shows off the flexibility of the Ning platform.

Let's see it in action -- here's what a social network on Ning looks like, in this case a Smashing Pumpkins fans social network called Pumpkins Central. You'll see that this social network includes video that a user has uploaded.

Here's how a user adds that video to her Facebook page -- this should look familiar, this is just how users add any application on Facebook today:

And here's a user's Facebook page with that video embedded -- notice that the Pumpkins Central branding is maintained:

When the user -- Kyle in this case -- clicks on the Pumpkins Central logo in the video player, he will go to the origin page for the video on the Pumpkins Central social network -- not some other random place.

A live example: assuming you already have a Facebook account, go here to add a photo slideshow from Kyle Ford, a product manager at Ning.

Check it out, and if you have any questions or issues, please join us at the Ning Network Creators social network or visit Ning Help.

Other links on this topic:

• The official Ning blog post.
• Techcrunch coverage.

Comments

[Don Seiler]

ning.com and its blog seem to be down right now :p

[Marc Andreessen]

Hi Don -- yup -- DNS access issue -- being fixed -- please check back soon!

[Wayt]

Great news. How should one handle login synchronization (Ning login different from Facebook login)?

[Vijay]

Good to know about this, Marc - thanks for posting.

Btw, is this only for uploading static content such as video, photos, and music? Can someone actually buy stuff from these sites - i.e. have a credit-card payment, maintain databases etc? In short, can we make use of highly-scalable Ning servers to write ANY application OR do we still have to come up with our own infrastructure to host such applications and store the relevant data?

Providing access to highly-scalable servers through your Ning site might be a worthwhile model to explore (a la App-Hosting model but the differentiating point here could be the immediate value you provide these early start-ups who could get millions of users in a matter of months thanks to FB platform but are unable to scale well on their own because getting so many users in a month or two was simply out of reach for most start-ups... till now)

I don't know if this model is what Ning has in mind.

Lastly, I am hoping you still have plans to address how does one go about (depending on the nature of the application ofcourse - e.g. standard e-commerce with 3-tier app structure, or an auction site etc) selecting a highly-scalable server architecture.

Any particular server products or best practices that Ning uses?

Thanks,
- Vijay

[Marc Andreessen]

Hi Wayt -- we're sidestepping that issue right now -- you don't have to log into a Ning user account to view a video/slideshow/musicplayer on Ning (unless the network creator wants you to have to -- however, that's not the scenario we're tackling with our Facebook integration up front). As a Facebook user you just add the relevant vieo/slideshow/musicplayer app like you add any other app, you don't have to log into Ning.

Hi Vijay -- so here's how it works:

Ning itself is a general-purpose hosted platform for building all kinds of social networks and social applications. As a platform Ning provides API's and built-in support for all kinds of functions including content management, search, user authentication, video transcoding, music, messaging, you name it.

Most users interact with Ning by creating a social network on Ning -- using application code we have written -- or using one of those social networks. But any network creator can also dip down into the code (PHP/Javascript) that comprises their network and change it to work however they want, or even build new social applications from scratch taking advantage of all the functions and API's we provide.

And Ning is a completely hosted environment so you never have to deal with scalability or operational issues -- you never have to download or run anything on your own systems -- it's all taken care of, and it's all point and click through a browser.

So specific answers to your questions:

* Social networks created on Ning can absolutely sell things -- do credit card or Paypal payments or anything else you want to do. If you can code it in PHP or Javascript and/or access it through a web services API, you can program Ning to do it -- if we don't already do it. (Payments are something we don't do natively yet, but we will in the not-too-distant future.)

* You can make use of Ning to write any application without needing to come up with your own infrastructure and database.

* For best practices for highly-scalable servers/ecommerce -- I may write about this in the future but for now, we've built a lot of our knowledge on this topic into Ning itself.

So back to your original question -- is this only for uploading static content like videos, photos, and music? Our specific automatic Facebook application generation as of right now is focused on video, photo, and music players. We will add more Facebook integration points in the future. But -- here's the cool thing -- you can also use Ning to create new hosted Facebook applications. To do this, create a network on Ning, request a copy of your code, and look at how we are doing it in PHP within the Ning application code -- then go crazy and create your own new Facebook applications running on Ning.

I hope this all makes sense :-). Please feel free to ask clarifying or additional questions and/or provide any feedback.

Best,
Marc

[Howard Weaver]

This is especially interesting to me. The Washington bureau of our news company (McClatchy) is launching a new site for public affairs journalism Monday (news.mcclatchy.com), and we've been looking for a way to use social networking capabilities to help readers form communities around topics/stories they're following. Ning offers a white label product, doesn't it? Can you guide me?

howard.weaver (at) gmail.com

Thanks.

[Dennis]

Marc,

Looks great.

But it is s.l.o.w. Help!

Thanks.

[Ryan Kuder]

Hi Marc,

I built my facebook app this morning for my network's photo slideshow. It's great to be able to get a Facebook presence without knowing a lick of code.

One thing I'd love to see is users having the option as to whether they want ALL the networks content, just their content, or just their friends content. This could uniquely leverage the connections you guys track on Ning. Hopefully we'll see 2.0 versions of these soon.

Thanks!

[Marc Andreessen]

Hi Dennis -- yup, we're experiencing a (non-Facebook-related) intermittent performance issue. The engineering team is all over it. Embarrassing but there you have it :-).

Ryan -- thanks for the feedback -- will pass to the product team!

Marc

[yohero]

hi Mark, smart move on Ning's part it shows forward thinking. you said that for those of us that are not interested in video,photo,or music player hosting we can use Ning to create Facebook applications by creating a network on Ning, requesting a copy of our code, and looking at how Ning is doing it in PHP within the Ning application code then create our own new Facebook applications running on Ning. that means it would require that we know how to read code or hire someone who does right? and will the automatic Facebook application generation you spoke of be available to Ning members who are not hosting music,photo's or video players? or would those people have to go through the normal Facebook application process. lastly,how many points of intergration are available through Ning's service. thank you for your foresight and helping the common man.

[yohero]

hi Mark, smart move on Ning's part it shows forward thinking. you said that for those of us that are not interested in video,photo,or music player hosting we can use Ning to create Facebook applications by creating a network on Ning, requesting a copy of our code, and looking at how Ning is doing it in PHP within the Ning application code then create our own new Facebook applications running on Ning. that means it would require that we know how to read code or hire someone who does right? and will the automatic Facebook application generation you spoke of be available to Ning members who are not hosting music,photo's or video players? or would those people have to go through the normal Facebook application process. lastly,how many points of intergration are available through Ning's service. thank you for your foresight and helping the common man.

[yohero]

hi Mark, smart move on Ning's part it shows forward thinking. you said that for those of us that are not interested in video,photo,or music player hosting we can use Ning to create Facebook applications by creating a network on Ning, requesting a copy of our code, and looking at how Ning is doing it in PHP within the Ning application code then create our own new Facebook applications running on Ning. that means it would require that we know how to read code or hire someone who does right? and will the automatic Facebook application generation you spoke of be available to Ning members who are not hosting music,photo's or video players? or would those people have to go through the normal Facebook application process. lastly,how many points of intergration are available through Ning's service. thank you for your foresight and helping the common man.

[tk]

Brilliant move !
I was hesitating to create a Ning community vs going to Facebook but with that feature, there is no hesitation anymore.
You get the best of both worlds

[Clyde Smith]

I've been helping out with a hip hop business social network at Ning called Da Bidness:
http://www.dabidness.com

It's at the point where I need to start spreading the word beyond our initial group and I'm thinking we can publicize the fact that now members will have an easy way to create widgets for Facebook.

I know lots of folks feel left out by not having a widget to spread on Facebook so I see this as useful for promoting our network.