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Anatomy of a Facebook Post

Page history last edited by Yannis Roussochatzakis 13 years, 9 months ago

The three parts of Facebook Posts

A Facebook Post consists of three parts:

 

  • A Message
  • An Attachment
  • An Action Link

 

Any post contains at least a Message or an Attachment.

 

The two types of Facebook Posts

There are two types of Facebook Posts:

 

  • Status Updates
  • Posts with Attachments

 

Status Updates contain only the Message part and they are the Facebook equivalent of a Tweet. In Status Updates the Message can be up to 420 characters long. In Regular Posts the Message can be as long as 10.000 characters.

 

The Attachment

The Attachment part of a Facebook Post consists of the following parts:

  • A Name
  • A URL
  • A Caption
  • A Description
  • Zero or more Media
  • Zero or more Properties

 

The Attachment Name is the title of the Attachment and is displayed in bold as a heading at the top of the attachment. 

 

If an Attachment URL is provided, then clicking on the Attachment Name will redirect the user to that URL.

 

The Attachment Caption is displayed as a sub heading under the Attachment Name.

 

The Attachment Description is text displayed under the Name and Caption of the Attachment. If the Description is too long Facebook will initially show an abstract followed be a "See more..." link which will expand it to full view. Facebook does not currently allow HTML in the Description. Any URLs contained in the description are automatically rendered as clickable.

 

The Attachment Media can be either images, video or audio.

 

The Attachment Properties if any are displayed under the Description in a tabular format as name/value pairs. Properties can also have associated hyper-links.

 

How RSS Graffiti creates Facebook Posts

 

RSS Graffiti can create both Status Updates and posts with Attachments. You determine what type of post is created for each feed by selecting the feed's Style in RSS Graffiti. The available styles to choose from are:

 

  • Standard
  • Compact
  • Status Update

 

 

The Standard Style creates posts with full attachments where most or all the Attachment fields are used.

 

The Compact Style omits the Attachment Name and Description and has been created for use in short stories like the ones coming form micro-blogs like Twitter. At first glance you might see no need for the Compact Style since a Status Update would seem enough for handling a short message like a tweet. Nevertheless this is not the case. In fact most Twitter users prefer not to update the Facebook Status with their tweets but rather create Compact Style posts. 

 

Only the Status Update Style creates Facebook Status Updates.

 

 

Comments (1)

ying said

at 8:19 pm on May 6, 2011

Hellooooooo Test

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