Category: Articles

What you will learn from this book

• Distribute and promote your application on the social platform
• Fetch user information and photos with Graph API
• Display Facebook user profiles and friends list
• Learn to use Facebook Graph API and API Explorer
• Check user credentials against the Social Platform effortlessly

In Detail

Facebook provides an iOS SDK to third party developers which allows them to develop iOS applications. These applications are then made available on the app store, from which the developers are entitled to 70 percent of sales revenue. Embedding these Facebook iOS SDK features takes applications to the next level of user engagement.

Starting with the process of setting up a Facebook developer account, we will use hands-on examples to walk you through developing and integrating social element like inviting others to use your software. This book focuses on detailing and documenting the process of developing an actual application. Through the course of the book, you will learn to use iOS SDK features in your code flawlessly.

Aiming to simplify the process of embedding Facebook iOS SDK features in your app, each chapter focuses on a new feature, and as you move through the chapters, you will find yourself embedding more functionality in your application. We begin with the creation of a new Facebook App ID before creating and setting up a project. Through the course of the book, you will use social platforms to authenticate users and fetch their social information to make your project more attractive and engaging. The book emphasizes on sharing functionalities, such as inviting friends through Facebook messages with the sole intention of making the app viral. By the end of the book, you will look at how to use the Facebook News Feed to make your app go viral. By the end of the book you will have built a powerful application using the world’s largest social media platform.

Get this book now.

Requirements:

• USB disk with at least 8GB size
• Download the Mavericks update, Do not install. (OSX cleans installation files upon installation)
• This drive can be used for fresh install of OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

Process:

1. Insert USB disk and use Disk Utility to erase the disk.
   This will erase and create a empty disk with name “Untitled”.
2. Start “Terminal” app, and run following command,

   sudo /Applications/Install OS X Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X Mavericks.app --nointeraction

3. System will ask you for a password. Enter and wait till the process completes.

   WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss
   or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your
   typing when using sudo. Type "man sudo" for more information.
   
   To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.
   
   Password:
   Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%...100%...
   Copying installer files to disk...
   Copy complete.
   Making disk bootable...
   Copying boot files...
   Copy complete.
   Done.

And it is done!

Many of the times we find ourselves in a meeting room with a team discussing about the product plans. People discuss about existing features, new features, ways to pull more traffic to the site, upcoming SEO processes etc. Everything to make a product more successful and valuable.

How do you measure success or value? Everyone uses different perspectives and merits for measuring these. Marketing team would think of it in terms of total traffic home page is generating, number of likes on social media. Management would think of it in terms of number of registrations, downloads. Anything and everything that gets more traffic and attracts new users. A Team goes on adding “new and exciting” features to make the product stand out. Often adding new features seems like an obvious thing to do, but at what cost?

The team neglects the huge factor about the current users who are using the product, those loyal users who supported the ongoing development of the product. Existing Users who are more than happy about the product and what it offers. Suddenly prospective users become more important than the existing users. Those who were considered ‘masters’ before, become ‘slaves’ the moment they click on the ‘Sign me up’ button.

We need to understand that our role does not end after a user ‘Signs Up’ for a product, it doubles. Users puts faith on our system to do the right thing for them, we as product creators need to respect that. It may sound foolish to think emotionally about the product business, but it is what has been proved correct for long time.  End to end experience is more important than the product itself. User base is a great power and it should be handled with greater responsibility.

Expanding the business can be very tricky. It can mean adding new features for existing users or adding new features to target new user base. We can also think of it in terms of redesigning the service to adapt requirements of existing users more closely. Here we have two distinct parameters i.e. feature set and user base, that we need to consider to expand our business. It can be improving existing feature set or adding new feature set, It can be satisfying existing users or specially targeting new users. More often the safest business plans include improving on existing feature set and satisfying our existing user base. 

Tim Brown in his book “Change by Design”, talks about the “Ways to Grow” Matrix, developed by Diego Rodriguez & Ryan Jacoby, IDEO.

Here, the idea is not to just focus on single type of business expansion plan but to invest efforts in all possible areas of improvement. This tool was developed to guide businesses manage their portfolios using design based innovation. This tool helps evaluate the innovation efforts within an organisation.

First of all, businesses should invest majority of their efforts into improving existing offerings for existing customers, because this is by far the safest way to expand the business. This means sending out an incremental updates or a next iteration of an existing product. It is very important for a business to invest in existing products and users, as this investment helps create a brand out of a product.

Investment into existing products and users creates a strong foundation for a business. It is important to explore new areas expansions once a strong foundation is in place. It can be achieved either by extending existing offerings to solve the unmet needs of current customers or adapting them to meet the needs of new customers. 

Toyota Prius is an example of evolutionary innovation along the product offering axis. Through clever engineering, Toyota offered a new breed of energy efficient transportation, Prius offered significantly lower fuel consumption with fuel increasing fuel prices.

On the similar lines Tata Nano is an example of innovation along the user axis. It involves adapting an existing product so that it can be manufactured at a lower cost and thus exploring a user base of indian families who could not afford a safer family transportation.

The most challenging type of innovation, and riskiest, is that in which both the product and the users are new. Very few companies achieve this great feat successfully. It means creating a whole new market with a ground breaking innovation. Apple did it with iPod & iTunes, in the process helped music industry move with the flow of new technology.

Company’s best defence is to focus on investing their efforts in creating a versatile portfolio and remain competitive in  a constantly changing world.