Happy Together: TypePad and Facebook Connect

We’re happy to announce TypePad support for Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect is a set of APIs from Facebook that allows TypePad and Facebook to communicate. Facebook Connect is an improvement over the existing Beacon service released in 2007.

Share your blog with 250 million of your closest friends
With Facebook Connect on TypePad, you can automatically share your blog posts with your friends on Facebook. And, as you would expect from TypePad, we give you full control over the posts you want to share. 

Your readers are as busy as you are. By sharing your blog posts from TypePad on Facebook, you can notify them about your latest news in a place that is convenient – and timely – for them. It’s a friendly reminder to come by your blog, and a great way to increase your blog’s traffic. This feature is exclusively available in the new TypePad - so if you haven't tried it yet, now's the time!

In addition to being a more reliable connection to Facebook, you will notice the immediate improvements:

• Posts from your iPhone, email, and the new TypePad bookmarklet can be automatically shared with Facebook. (Click to learn how to update your settings.)
• You can now share your post to Facebook from the Compose editor.

To take advantage of this great new feature in TypePad, check out our Knowledge Base article
“Sharing Posts on Facebook.”  Please note: If you had Facebook Beacon integration set up before, please update your settings.

Make Your Facebook Friends Feel Welcome
TypePad also makes it easier for your readers who come from Facebook to comment on your blog.  This new upgrade allows your readers to sign to and comment with their Facebook log in.

And more is on the way. With new avatar support for commenters – just added to the beta group today— your Facebook commenters will have their Facebook picture appear with their comment. It’s another great way to welcome your Facebook friends to your blog community.


This is just one of the many ways TypePad takes care of your social media optimization (SMO). Stay tuned for more ways to increase your blog traffic. 

Comments

[Carol Wilkerson]

Of course, this only works in the new Typepad design, not the old one. No way to find "Account" and then Other Accounts in the old dashboard. Kind of forces people to use the new one, huh? :)

[Gary Koehler]

Indeed. You all might have noted that in your 'knowledge base' before I spent time trying to figure out what you were talking about and having no clue until I just read the comment from webduck.

[Ginevra]

duly notes - I've updated the post (since Mark's out of pocket this afternoon) to reflect that the new Facebook Connect stuff is an exclusive feature of the new TypePad. It's pretty cool though, all things said.

[Ginevra]

I like to think of it as encouraging people to try the new TypePad. :)

But fair point - I just updated the post (with bold letters, evebn!) to reflect that FB Connect is a feature exclusive to people who are trying the new TypePad out.

[Rex Whisman]

Thank you webduck. I have spent the last hour trying to figure out how to do this and feeling like a complete idiot. It would help to make this known in the first place and perhaps that would have been an incentive to upgrade! Ginevra I understand your point but isn't the web all about transparency?

[candy]

I, for one, LOVE the new Typepad...and the new features with Facebook Connect. Very cool! Thanx!

[Carol Wilkerson]

I like the new Typepad too, but let's be honest in all things here. As Rex said, we need transparency, not subterfuge. Enough said about this though. You did the right thing and made it very apparent which Typepad has it. Please, keep this in mind should you want us to try other new things.

[Ginevra]

oof - my apologies for the misunderstanding. We're updating the knowledge base now to show the distinct differences for the sharing your post feature that only works in the new TypePad. I'm grateful (as ever) to y'all in the community for making sure we know when something seems confusing - sometimes wires get a bit crossed but it's certainly not intentional.

have a great evening, and please let me know if there's anything else we can do to help.

[Anastasia]

My default TypePad blog http://cordelia.typepad.com/anastasia has been appearing in the Notes on Facebook for almost a year now without the slightest problem. I have also been prompted to share posts from my other TypePad blogs during all this time. Then all of a sudden, nothing works! Not only am I not prompted to send a post to Facebook but my default blog no longer appears in the Notes! My post from yesterday did not appear in the Facebook notes and this happens for the first time in a year! So after receiving your mail today, I went to Account < Other Accounts where I had already added Facebook and tried to edit following your instructions. All I got was a message saying that if I use Internet Explorer I may not be able to add or edit an account and that I'd rather try using a different browser!I have always used Internet Explorer and there has never been a problem before! Sorry, I don't have another browser and I don't want to use a different one. I was, indeed, very excited about the integration with Facebook but now I feel very disappointed as many of my readers come from Facebook and , as a result of this problem, my blog traffic has considerably dropped since yesterday. Hope you fix this problem soon.

[Ginevra]

Hi Anastasia! You're so far ahead of our SF office in terms of time zones that you've just about beat us to the punch - there was a small issue with IE, but we should have it fixed up really soon. I'm so sorry you've had issues with this, but rest assured, our engineering team and our contacts at Facebook are going to help us make sure we've got this sorted out ASAP.

Thanks again for all your feedback and support - it truly helps us. We'll update everyone who's seeing any IE quirks as soon as we can.

[Anastasia]

Thanks Ginevra. I greatly appreciate your help and I do hope my post from yesterday will appear on Facebook eventually as this was the second part. If not, it's no use posting Part III I guess.

[Paul Chaney]

Simple solution everyone. Use the new Typepad. Try it, you'll like it. I've been using TP since '03 and was a tad resistant to trying the new interface, but find it to have an increased degree of usability. Sure, takes some getting used to, but after you do, I believe you reach similar conclusions. Just my encouragement to step out of the comfort zone.

[Account Deleted]

I find the "X posted Y using Typepad" a bit limited, and would love if TypePad could offer users the ability to customize the information posted to Facebook. The announcements would attract more interest among Facebook users if they included some more content from the blog post itself (photo, excerpt, etc.). Hope that can be taken into consideration.

[MELANCHOLIA]

Nice application indeed, it works smoothly in the new TP! Keep up the good work, guys.

[Amy]

Question: when you use this will the wall post on Facebook show a picture? I think my readers are more inclined to look at my article if they see a picture from the post as well. Currently I just go to my Facebook page and post a link to the story so that I can then pick a picture that will also post. Would be great if Typepad did this automatically. Thanks!

[Rex Whisman]

Amy I agree.

[Pamela Cohn]

thanks for the encouragement, Paul - I'm so glad you're leading the way in helping us to get more people psyched on the new TypePad!

[Pamela Cohn]

yay! glad you like it! there's lots more cool stuff to come. :)

[Barbara Hagerty]

I was hesitant at first, but I'm glad I tried the new Typepad and stuck with it. The features were well worth the patience required for me to form a few new habits. I wouldn't even call it a learning curve. It's really just trading old habits for new and better ones, I think.

I had my Typepad blog configured to my facebook manually before the direct connect feature was introduced, and everything but the comments posted to my facebook notes automatically each time I made a Typepad blog post. I'm looking forward to seeing if there's any difference in how my new Typepad posts will appear on facebook now that I've just configured the connect feature.

[Ginevra]

thanks so much! we're excited too.

[Geu]

Hi Amy - when TypePad shares your post to Facebook, we're currently only sending a text excerpt of your post. But you have a good point: if posts have images, it would be great to show that on Facebook as well. I'm working with our engineering team to see how we can implement your suggestion. Thanks!

[Brian Barela]

do i have to do anything to enable the facebook connect commenting feature?

that's a huge update i've been waiting for.

[Account Deleted]

Hello guys, i think im late for this thread already but i just wanna say my opinion about this. Typepad Rocks! thanks for this great improvement. This works a lot better compared to the previous which will make your post only shown in the sidebar of FB profile. This new feature will make my FB friends more notified about my latest activities in my blog. Keep up the good work guys!

[Account Deleted]

Hi Ginevra,
My Facebook prompts do not pop up anymore even on the new Typepad dashboard. I once sent a Help support ticket about this, and the staff said I should wait for the time that FB and Typepad are working together well. Now that you're announcing it's working, why is it not working with me, even on my new dashboard. Even when I'm logged on at Facebook. Every time I publish a post for the first time, Facebook prompts do not pop up anymore and it has been like this for a month now.
And because of this, my Facebook notes are no longer updated.

[Geu]

Hi Brian, you shouldn't need to do anything different to offer FB Connect on your blog. As long as you have comment authentication set to Required or Optional, when your readers want to leave a comment they'll have the option to use their FB credentials.

[Manuel Molina]

Awesome!

[Ginevra]

Hi Bing - I've asked support to touch base with you on this to help you out. You should be hearing from them soon.

[Kevin Davis]

I like the new connection option but am frustrated because I want to be able to post my updates to my Facebook Fan Page -- not my personal profile!

How can you connect a TypePad blog to a Fan Page as opposed to a personal profile?

[Ginevra]

we're working with Facebook to make that feature available - glad to hear you'd like it too!

[Anastasia]

Hi Ginevra. I have exactly the same problem as Bing as far as Facebook Connect is concerned. I can't get the FB Connect pop-up even though I clear cookies, browsing history and perform a hard refresh of Other Accounts. I have tried 5 different computers so far, so I guess TypePad does not read my network. What I find a bit frustrating is that I get the FB Connect pop-up on digg.com, plaxo.com and TripAdvisor.com - all three of them free sites. However, I would like to congratulate your Support team for everything they do to help me. It's a great team and I do trust them. This said, I often feel inclined to go back to my hiding place on the Net, the old TypePad, yet I really love the new TypePad and I will stick with it. I am very glad that my voice is heard and my opinion matters. This only happens on TypePad! Keep up the good work! The only thing I really did not like on the new TypePad is the fact that comments appear on the dashboard even though I have chosen to moderate them! And they do appear before I approve them! This is why I find this option unnecessary on the new TypePad. Comments will appear on the dashboard anyway!

[Account Deleted]

Liking the look of the new-and-improved Facebook posts, and looking forward (like BCR above) to being able to post to my fan page, too.

thanks

[Savannah Brentnall]

Can you include comments in a future version of this widget? Many of my friends use facebook to comment on my blog posts, and I have to manually cut and paste those comments over to my blog. Can you make it a two-way connect, so that facebok comments appear on the blog as blog comments?

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1438820713]

hi

[Edward A. Rodriguez]

I love this feature. I am also wondering if there is a way that once the posts shows on facebook, the favicon is the one on my blog instead of typepad's. How could that be accomplished?