iOS app developers looking to maximize their referral channels can take advantage of Facebook's “Native Share Dialog” that makes it as easy as inserting a single line of code to their existing apps to take advantage of this viral sharing channel.
Introduced early this week, Facebook announced the availability of this feature (which you can read about here). The AppAddictive team caught a glimpse of this technology during Facebook's invite-only event for mobile app developers held last April.
What exactly is this “Native Share Dialog” and what does it mean for developers and their users? If a user is logged on in their native Facebook App, in this case the iOS version (Android to come soon), other apps (and websites) that would like to share items on their respective users' timelines will no longer be required to log-in. This more or less mimics the ubiquity of the Like button embedded on other websites, making your Facebook experience seamless. The same applies for native mobile apps through the introduction of the “Native Share Dialog”
Facebook reported last May that they currently have over 751 million Active mobile users, and it's quite natural for the company to introduce new innovations like these.
According to Facebook, “The Share Dialog offers a lightweight and consistent way to enable sharing from your apps. People now have the option to share activity from apps through this dialog without needing to login to Facebook first. This eliminates 1 – 3 extra steps required for login when sharing via the feed dialog.
The Share Dialog further improves upon the iOS6 share sheet by adding support for publishing Open Graph actions to make it easier for people to tell their stories on mobile. In addition, people can now tag friends and share where they are enabling them to share in a more meaningful and engaging way, while helping even more people connect with your app.”
Pretty neat isn't it?
When we started AppAddictive, building tools for brand marketers as early as 2007, we took advantage of all these new features right after Facebook rolls them out. We've been fairly eager to try these things, and one of our apps eventually had a monthly active user base of 10 million users. And this was before AppAddictive became a “formal startup” – we were just doing this on weekends as a hobbyist!
If we were to do it again as a developer, we'd certainly build a mobile app and take advantage of Facebook's mobile users.