Links posted by 3rd party apps via the Graph API are treated differently. In September it was concluded that they are even penalized when considered for displaying on the home stream. Facebook allegedly fixed that. But still, posts via the Graph API have some handicap, and that’s on purpose.
Recently I reported a bug that links posted via the Graph API lack the “share” button. As you can see, this is “by design”. In other words, facebook deliberately handicaps 3rd party posts. In addition to that, recently posts by my app started being copllapsed on the homepage. The bug-report is still unresolved, without any feedback.
Of course, I may be exaggerating here – just a couple of missing features, and some bugs unresolved for a long time. On the other hand some things are improving – for example now you can tag people in API posts. A couple of months ago I tried to figure out the reasons for their not-so-great API. And one of them was:
Company policy. Facebook’s main revenue is adverts and adverts are viewed on facebook.com. Not on other sites that consume facebook content. So not giving a fully-functional API makes sense. Users should still have incentives to go to facebook.com
This is absolutely understandable, and I’m not complaining about it. It’s just that Mark should not emphasize on the “facebook platform” if they are not truly committed to it.
