Facebook unveiled features to help developers enhance their apps at its Mobile Developer Conference in New York City today. Among the changes are features designed to ease concerns about data sharing.
Noting that users can be wary of giving third-party apps access to their profile data via Facebook login, the company now enables brands to further clarify which data they are accessing.
“We made the decision to separate when you can ask a user for permission to personalize their experience on your app from asking for permission to post on their behalf,” explained Director of Product Doug Purdy. “This way users can feel more secure.” Brands that tested this feature saw a 5% increase in their login conversions, claimed Facebook.
Other new features aim to help developers smoothen the implementation of two-year-old Facebook Open Graph on mobile devices. For instance, a new Object API allows developers to directly create Open Graph objects on a mobile app without having to maintain a separate page and web server. Facebook also introduced an Object Browser, a visual interface that shows developers the object data they’re publishing.
Additionally, Facebook released SDK 3.5 for iOS, which adds support for the Object API, native Share Dialog and native Login Dialog. The Android version will be coming soon, according to Facebook. From a marketing perspective, this makes it easier for companies to take advantage of custom stories, sharing capabilities and other Open Graph actions in the mobile environment.
Facebook also released a new native Share Dialog, enabling users to share activities from apps without having to log into Facebook first. Adding this feature is as simple “as adding a ‘Like’ button — it just takes one line of code,” said Purdy.
The native Share Dialog is now available in limited beta for iOS apps and will be coming to Android shortly. Facebook claims roughly 680 million mobile users. It also says more than 81% of the top 100 grossing iOS apps and more than 70% of the top 100 grossing Android apps integrate with its social network.
