Huddler launches Facebook Connect

We launched a very exciting feature today that will open the community's great content to a larger audience and bring new users in - it's called Facebook Connect.

The basic premise is that any user that comes to the site that has a Facebook account (there are more than 100 MILLION of them worldwide) can register for Huddler with just one click. We will automatically pull over their name, picture and other relevant information so that they don't have to complete our registration process, validate their email address, etc. Contributing to the Huddle is faster and easier than ever.

More than that, when these users and all current Huddlers that have Facebook accounts create forum threads, reply to existing threads, or write reviews, we now have the option to publish that activity to our Facebook Activity feeds.

Facebook then publishes some subset of these activities into your friends' feeds on Facebook so that they can find out about great discussions you're taking part in or new products you've reviewed.

We're very excited about the potential this has to get the word out about Huddler, and it represents a MONUMENTAL engineering effort, so congratulations to the team! We're one of the first sites to go live with this functionality, so we'll be iterating on it in the coming weeks, but let us know what you think.

Thanks!

Edited by deej - Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:28:27 GMT

Congrats to the entire Huddler team! We're incredibly excited to be working together with you guys to make the web more social, and the world more green.

I've got a Facebook account and obviously a Huddler account - will it do that stuff for me automatically?

I see the 'Are you a Facebook User' box at the bottom.  Do I just need to click that?

To be a bit more clear on how it works:

If you're an existing Huddler user and have a Facebook account:

• Nothing changes - when you write in the forums or create a review, there will simply be a checkbox at the bottom of the post that if you check it, it will give you the option to publish that content into your activity feed on FB (AWESOME)
• It doesn't make any changes to your Huddler account or your FB account, you're just able to share your content within your FB feed

If you're a Facebook user with no Huddler Account:

• When you start the registration process, you will have the option to "Connect with Facebook"
• If you're already logged in to Facebook, then Huddler will automatically create an account for you that uses some of your information from Facebook
• Rather than checking a box to publish your content to Facebook, you will automatically see pop-overs offering to publish to Facebook whenever the option is there (when you post in the forums or write a review)
• In addition, we can show you which of our Facebook friends have already joined Huddler, and invite others (see pics below)

Anyone else have a chance to check this out today? We actually got quite a few people join the site using the "Connect with Facebook", but they're apparently a quiet bunch thus far.

Any existing Huddlers have questions/comments? Thanks!

deej

so this is probably a dumb question, but where is the box i need to click to connect my already existing facebook account to my huddler account?

When you're using your existing Huddler account, you'll only see the new checkbox when you write a post or a new review.  If you check that option, you should get prompted to allow the accounts to be linked.  Did you see the new checkbox and check it?

Thanks so much for trying it out.

ok, I just made a post on here and did the are you a facebook user thing, I don't think i pressed the right thing when prompted to post the story to facebook though :( sorry
 

Deej gave a little bit of a description of how Facebook Connect works if you're an existing user...but here's one with a few more pictures.

If you're already logged in with your Huddler account, at the bottom of your review box or a forum post you'll see a check box that says "Are you a Facebook User?"

Check that box.

Then you'll either get a box asking you to log in with Facebook or you'll get a "Publish this story to your Facebook profile?" box which looks like this...

You'll have a few choices.  You can publish the story as a one line insert, with a short description, or with a long description.  Or!  You can choose not to publish to your Facebook profile.

If you do choose to publish the story, it will then show up on your Facebook wall!

Let us know how it goes next time you give it a whirl!

so i used the facebook button and thingy for my thread here to also publish it on facebook- http://greenhome.huddler.com/forum/thread/867/what-is-wrong-with-people-hundreds-of-black-friday-shoppers-break-down-walmart-doors-trample-employee-to-death\

and instead of publishing on huddler as my screen name here, it published it under my facebook account, using that avatar pic and my real name (which i noticed is private and just says facebook user to most people, so that's cool)

didn't know if it was suppose to do this or if it hit a glitch or what, it's the first time i used it, so i don't have comparison.

Yeah I've had the same thing happen - after I used that facebook button, I think the next thing I did on Huddler it used my facebook account name instead of my Huddler account name.  I had to sign out and sign back in as dana1981.

Yeah, that will happen if you've connected with Facebook using this button:

Bascially, that creates an entirely new account for you on Huddler based on your Facebook information.  So if you have a registered Huddler account (i.e. my stins account versus my Cristina Foung facebook account), and if you get logged out of Huddler (and you're logged in on Facebook), it will automatically log you in with that new Facebook account because it detects that you're logged in with Facebook.

Wow, that last sentence barely makes sense!  Okay, so here's the example using my account.

I have my stins account.  I also ended up with a Facebook account which directly linked my Cristina Foung FB account.  If I'm logged in as stins, then I can publish to my FB account using that little "Are you a Facebook User?" check box on my forum posts and my reviews.  All of that content will be attributed to stins.

But oh no!  Let's say somehow my "Remember me" box gets unchecked...or if some other Huddler like Deej uses my computer to get into his account.  Okay, so now I'm signed out as stins.

Now...before I log into Huddler as stins, I go log into my Facebook account.  When I go back to Huddler, it will automatically detect that I have a Facebook Connect huddler account since I'm logged into Facebook.  That means, I'll be logged into Huddler as Cristina Foung (rather than stins).

Unfortunately, once you've got the two accounts I'm not sure there's anything we can do to merge them.  But I'll definitely check with our engineering team.

Thanks so much for the feedback!  Keep it coming.

I would prefer to link/merge the accounts instead of having two.

Totally understandable. So long as you keep your "Remember Me?" box checked when you log in with your Huddler username, it solves most of those problems, because then you can just check the "Are you a Facebook User?" box in your forum posts and reviews whenever you'd like to share something.

Stins is right that the complexity only arises when you're logging out of Huddler, but staying logged in to FB, etc. It's not perfect, but we're one of the first 20 companies to launch it (an AMAZING feat considering our small team) and already we're getting great traction, so we'd like to keep pushing it.

Share those forum posts and reviews when you think it's appropriate and please keep the feedback coming!

dan