Creating a Facebook App for your Business

Carolina Usbeck - October 28, 2010

Facebook has become a dimension of social media that enables companies as well as individuals to display their information and communicate with their friends and customers.

There are many ways to integrate Facebook to a website by the use of the “like” button or displaying a wall and also creating a page or an application.

To create an application if you are familiar with creating a page is pretty simple, all you need to do is to create a developer account, create an application and customize the profile of the application. The application will be viewable in a url similar to the following “app.facebook.com/your app name/” and required to have at least one developer account, but many can be added.

There are 2 ways of creating an application and Facebook provides a nice interface to help you choose the type of application you would like. You can either select a frame application, which is the default, or an FBML application. If you plan on keeping it simple, I would suggest using a frame. This gives you the freedom of creating any type of app without the need of Facebook integration. If you plan on integrating Facebook to the application, you will probably require the use of FBML. For both of these set-ups you will need to have a server that will host your application files.

The advantage of having a Facebook application instead of a page is that you can have a lot more content and pages within that content; you can consider it a mini site within facebook. This can help you obtain information from clients by having a contact form and also creating a nicer means to communicate the different products or promotions your company has.