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The birthday card app migrated to Facebook connected mobile apps a while ago. For the Facebook canvas app (40K DAU) there is no solution and the whole thing is

by idoh 11y ago

The birthday card app migrated to Facebook connected mobile apps a while ago. For the Facebook canvas app (40K DAU) there is no solution and the whole thing is a loss. For Android / iOS we are going to get birthday information from the user's contacts, and make a go of it that way. So for solutions, basically we did not find any. Just upgrading our app to FB 2.x was a challenge enough. We have compatible versions, but there is still about 50K Android users that have not upgraded, and basically when we do the switch the app will be 100% broken for them.

junto 11y ago
This kind of stuff bugs me. I hate it that my friends can share my personal data with your application without my permission. Someone needs to solve this problem. It isn't an easy one. Users want to use services that make it easy to manage data related to their contacts. Whilst some apps are more shady than others with the use of this data, the bottom line is that it is a privacy attack by proxy.
- idoh 11y ago
  It's a fair opinion. In a way Facebook solved it by not allowing the sharing any more. In the birthday cards case the app is benign, it gets the data so that friends can send you a card on your birthday. Without some mechanism to get friends birthdays, this class of app just cannot exist.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Thanks for getting back to me. :) Yeah that sucks, those were my findings as well, was hoping someone had found some unique solution. I found one solution but it's a horrible UI experience (e.g. open a web view in an app, login the user, scrape the birthdays from their FB. Technically it's not super tricky but the steps for the user just scream 'scammy', so I'm not pursuing that.) How's the contact list experience been like? I personally only have names & phone numbers there, an occasional email address but that's it. Do many of your users have birthdays listed in their contacts, too? I personally can't imagine filling in the birthday myself when creating a contact, wondering what the typical user does. I actually found your app some months ago while doing research on how to make it work and was wondering what your trick was. But it seems it was just built using the old API!
- idoh 11y ago
  That's an interesting approach. We probably won't do it for the same reason that you won't. The contact list experience has not been really great for us. We are going to press on, I think we have a 50-50 chance of making it. I feel like the world needs a good way to send birthday cards to friends, someone is going to figure it out and we have a good shot at it. We were on the old API for as long as possible. We made the switch a little ahead of schedule. So far it is going OK. What app are you working on? Feel free to hit me up, my email is in my profile.

by idoh 11y ago

junto 11y ago

This kind of stuff bugs me. I hate it that my friends can share my personal data with your application without my permission. Someone needs to solve this problem. It isn't an easy one. Users want to use services that make it easy to manage data related to their contacts. Whilst some apps are more shady than others with the use of this data, the bottom line is that it is a privacy attack by proxy.

idoh 11y ago
It's a fair opinion. In a way Facebook solved it by not allowing the sharing any more. In the birthday cards case the app is benign, it gets the data so that friends can send you a card on your birthday. Without some mechanism to get friends birthdays, this class of app just cannot exist.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

Thanks for getting back to me. :) Yeah that sucks, those were my findings as well, was hoping someone had found some unique solution. I found one solution but it's a horrible UI experience (e.g. open a web view in an app, login the user, scrape the birthdays from their FB. Technically it's not super tricky but the steps for the user just scream 'scammy', so I'm not pursuing that.) How's the contact list experience been like? I personally only have names & phone numbers there, an occasional email address but that's it. Do many of your users have birthdays listed in their contacts, too? I personally can't imagine filling in the birthday myself when creating a contact, wondering what the typical user does. I actually found your app some months ago while doing research on how to make it work and was wondering what your trick was. But it seems it was just built using the old API!

idoh 11y ago
That's an interesting approach. We probably won't do it for the same reason that you won't. The contact list experience has not been really great for us. We are going to press on, I think we have a 50-50 chance of making it. I feel like the world needs a good way to send birthday cards to friends, someone is going to figure it out and we have a good shot at it. We were on the old API for as long as possible. We made the switch a little ahead of schedule. So far it is going OK. What app are you working on? Feel free to hit me up, my email is in my profile.