We've spent most of the last few days getting some of the new FB features implemented on our site. After endless hours getting their quirky settings just right and pushing to production, imagine my surprise when I tested one of our stories and I Like returned a non-information "Error"
If you inspect the response from the request via Firebug or similar inspector, you can see the full error message they're returning. Its useful for finding out exactly what is going wrong. We had some malformed urls early on that led me to finding the error messages in this manner.
The title of our article in question is "Friend of Marie Osmond's Son Said Bryan Made Three Previous Suicide Attempts". Here's a link: http://www.theinsider.com/news/3285624_Friend_of_Marie_Osmond_s_Son_Said_Bryan_Made_Three_Previous_Suicide_Attempts
The error message is:
Brief: "The page title contains a blocked word or phrase."
Full: "The title of your page (\"Friend of Marie Osmond's Son Said Bryan Made Three Previous Suicide Attempts\") contains a blocked word or phrase. The title might be blocked because it potentially violates a trademark, or because the title violates our Terms of Service."
I tested I Like with a few other stories that contained the word "Hitler" and "drugs" and those gave no problems. I'm guessing Facebook has a problem with "suicide".
We had no forewarning that the words we put in the titles of our articles were even going to be filtered and we have yet to receive a list of "banned words".
I've been digging the new FB features. The new Activity/Recommendations widget is nice, and the support for OAuth is awesome. This is probably just something that slipped through the cracks in the days leading up to launch and will get fixed quickly. But be aware, right now your content is being filtered.
If you inspect the response from the request via Firebug or similar inspector, you can see the full error message they're returning. Its useful for finding out exactly what is going wrong. We had some malformed urls early on that led me to finding the error messages in this manner.
The title of our article in question is "Friend of Marie Osmond's Son Said Bryan Made Three Previous Suicide Attempts". Here's a link: http://www.theinsider.com/news/3285624_Friend_of_Marie_Osmond_s_Son_Said_Bryan_Made_Three_Previous_Suicide_Attempts
The error message is: Brief: "The page title contains a blocked word or phrase." Full: "The title of your page (\"Friend of Marie Osmond's Son Said Bryan Made Three Previous Suicide Attempts\") contains a blocked word or phrase. The title might be blocked because it potentially violates a trademark, or because the title violates our Terms of Service."
I tested I Like with a few other stories that contained the word "Hitler" and "drugs" and those gave no problems. I'm guessing Facebook has a problem with "suicide".
We had no forewarning that the words we put in the titles of our articles were even going to be filtered and we have yet to receive a list of "banned words".
I've been digging the new FB features. The new Activity/Recommendations widget is nice, and the support for OAuth is awesome. This is probably just something that slipped through the cracks in the days leading up to launch and will get fixed quickly. But be aware, right now your content is being filtered.