Creating a Facebook App with Ning

Marc Andreessen posted over the weekend about how it was now possible to use Ning’s platform to build Facebook Apps.  According to the pitch, using Ning for Facebook Apps provides the publisher with two primary advantages; 1) You don’t have to be a developer to inject content into Facebook; and 2) You can rely on Ning’s servers to handle any scaling issues that arise should your content go viral.

Curious, I took it for a spin.

Before you can build your Facebook app with Ning, you must first create a social network using Ning’s platform.  I set up a social network called “Sky Blue Sky,” loosely built around the Wilco record of the same name.

I pulled in an RSS feed of Wilco reviews via an RSS feed, embedded a Wilco review / feedback badge, and added a list of top rated Wilco songs – all using RateItAll’s stable of syndication tools.

It was tremendously easy to use the Ning platform to set up a network.  There is neat drag and drop functionality, a variety of tools to choose from, and plenty of customization options.  All in all, building a Ning social network was as easy, if not easier, as setting up a Typepad blog.  If you haven’t messed around with Ning recently, I strongly recommend taking it for a whirl.

Once I had my network set up to my satisfaction, I began the process of promoting it on Facebook.  Clicking the “Manage” tab on my network provided me with a “Facebook Promotion” option.  I was given the choice of three Ning modules that I could convert into Facebook Apps: Videos, Music, and Photos.  For each module that you wish to add to Facebook, you have to create a separate App.

After choosing to a build a photo Facebook app, the service launched me into a parallel browser process in which Ning provided me with step by step instructions on how to create a Facebook Application, and Facebook walked me through the required fields to get an app up and running.

It didn’t take me long to have my Sky Blue Sky slideshow set up as a Facebook App.  You can check it out here.

Overall, the process was pretty easy.  The only thing that isn’t working for me is the link from my Ning social network that would let visitors add the photo slideshow to their Facebook profile.  This link generates an error (which could very well be the result of (my) user error).

So what are the benefits of using Ning to push your content live?  They’re pretty much exactly what Marc Andreessen says they are.  It’s easy, you don’t have to be technical, and the scaling headaches are Ning’s not yours.

But there are limitations.  Currently, each of the application types (photos, music, video) that you can build via Ning are available via other, more specialized applications (Facebook Photos, Last.FM, Widgetbox) – and the other services don’t make you set up a social network in order to push the content to Facebook.

Additionally, it’s too bad that I wasn’t able to convert all the modules of my Ning social network into Facebook Apps.  Perhaps this is coming.

As it stands today, my assessment is that using Ning’s tools to promote content on Facebook is a no brainer if you have already built a Ning network.  If you haven’t and are simply looking to push video, photo, or music content into Facebook, there are probably better and more specialized tools available to you. 

However, should Ning decide to unbundle its Facebook promotion tools from its social networking platform, Ning could become a quick and easy way to push your content into Facebook – and would put them squarely in competition with services such as Widgetbox and Clearspring.

One final thought here – from a marketing perspective, I found Ning’s soft launch of this Facebook conversion tool to be masterful.  Several days ago, Marc Andreessen posted the definitive post on the Facebook platform, and painted a vivid picture of the dangers of building a Facebook app without having the supporting infrastructure:

The implication is, in my view, quite clear -- the Facebook Platform is primarily for use by either big companies, or venture-backed startups with the funding and capability to handle the slightly insane scale requirements. Individual developers are going to have a very hard time taking advantage of it in useful ways.

This post (deservedly) got huge exposure around the blogosphere, and probably left a bunch of publishers hesitant to build for Facebook until they’re sure that they can scale.  It certainly caused my employer to take a hard look at how we would manage the problems imposed by a booming Facebook application, and to consider delaying our launch a bit.

So what does blog.pmarca post next?  An elegant solution for how publishers might push content into Facebook without the fear of a “success kills” scenario.

We all have our agendas.

To learn more about using Ning to push content to Facebook, check out this how to video.

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