Facebook Connect

Former_MSE_Forum_Manager

Hi Folks,

We’re quite close to being able to rollout Facebook Connect to all our users. We’re giving it to our trusted user group to test first, spot roadblocks and speed bumps and to hopefully let us know any issues and problems. We’ve provided a light Q&A below to hopefully help get you started (and please do read these before you do anything), but do give it a try and let us know how you get on.


What’s Facebook Connect?
Facebook Connect will allow you to associate your Facebook account with your forum account, making registration and logging in swift and easy, and giving you the option of posting MoneySavingExpert.com user comments back to your Facebook wall to share with others.

Won’t other users now know who I am?
We take security of our users as priority number one, and we can assure you that the act of linking your Facebook account to your user account will not allow any other user to see the connection. Your privacy remains completely intact.

What about posting to my wall?
If you choose to post any of your or another users comments back to your Facebook wall, naturally you are allowing people to potentially make the connection. However, this option is defaulted to COMPLETELY OFF as standard, and you will have an option in your user control panel to decide if you want this option enabled AT ALL. We will NEVER force this on you, or make it a requirement of forum use. However, please be aware that it exists and consider carefully whether you want to use it.

Is posting to my wall “all or nothing”?
In a word, no. These are the following options and what they do:

In your UserCP

“Ask if I want to post new threads I start to my Facebook wall”
This gives you the option to post to your wall when you start a thread (This is simply letting us know you would want to, it does NOT post anything to your Facebook wall).

“Default post-to-wall option to 'on'”
When you go to start a thread, this will default the checkbox on the new thread to ‘on’, which means “please post this to Facebook”. Please be very careful with this. In effect it’s saying you are likely to want to post the majority of what you post on our forum, to your Facebook wall.

At thread level

“Post to my Facebook wall”
This is the checkbox that tells us, at this point, that when you post a thread to the MSE Forum, you want it to be posted to your Facebook page. By default, this will always be OFF, unless you have decided to check the “Default post-to-wall option” to on in your user CP as mentioned above.

Can I send posts to my Facebook wall, as well as threads?
During testing, no. However we aim to roll this out in the future.

I’ve tried it, I’m not keen. Can I take it off again?
Absolutely. We’ve given you the option to Disassociate Facebook from your main forum account at any time.

What ends up on my Facebook page?
At present (based on Facebook’s policy) what Facebook will show is our standard MSE logo, our standard MSE sub-line and a link to your post or thread. We don’t have a huge amount of control over what Facebook does and might do in the future in terms of what it displays, but currently it will look like this:



Please post any feedback, especially technical, on here and our team will be monitoring it.

A final reminder
We want this to make your MSE Forum experience easier and more social with Facebook, and whilst we will reiterate that connecting your Facebook and MSE Forum account DOES NOT compromise your privacy or tell people who you really are, posting to your wall obviously makes that connection a lot easier. Please make sure you are comfortable with this before you play with that functionality

Former_MSE_Joe

Good morning Everyone,

This functionality has been turned on for everyone. Please report any bugs you spot on this thread.

Joe

torbrex

I don't use facebook, will this new connect have any effect on the speed of my MSE account?

Former_MSE_Forum_Manager

torbrex wrote: »

I don't use facebook, will this new connect have any effect on the speed of my MSE account?

Hi torbrex,

Whether you choose to use Facebook Connect or not, there should be no speed issues whatsoever.

torbrex

Hi

I have started a seperate thread for a new problem that has cropped up with the connect feature

Please see here

Tigsteroonie

MSE_Forum_Manager wrote: »

We want this to make your MSE Forum experience easier and more social with Facebook, and whilst we will reiterate that connecting your Facebook and MSE Forum account DOES NOT compromise your privacy or tell people who you really are, posting to your wall obviously makes that connection a lot easier. Please make sure you are comfortable with this before you play with that functionality

But will our Facebook identity be passed over to MoneySupermarket.com with our MSE alias in due course?

No thanks. No offence MSE, but I just don't trust the privacy aspect.

Hello Stalkers!

marleyboy

Not sure I like the potential of my FB account being trolled, or indeed have my identity compromised on MSE. I hope this wont be some sort of "Opt out" feature as I think I will avoid merging my accounts and stick to the good old fashioned method of keeping them completely separate.

As above, I too would not like the idea of Moneysupermarket spamming my FB account.

Former_MSE_Forum_Manager

Regarding the concerns raised in posts 6 and 7, MoneySavingExpert.com are the sole keepers of all MSE Forum data currently, and when the sale completes (likely end of September) the > EDITORIAL CODE < ensures that this is completely unaffected and remains the sole property of MoneySavingExpert.com.

meher

please excuse my profound ignorance, what does facebook connect actually mean to begin with

I'm just trying to figure out the difference between those little icons at the bottom of the page:
Bookmarks del.icio.us Digg Facebook Google StumbleUpon Twitter
... which already seem to include an fb button anyway and this new fb connet. Apart from that, I think social networking is the trend. Wihtout facilitating netwroking through those small buttons, mse would be in the dark.

MothballsWallet

I'm so glad I'm not on Face-ache, sorry, book. Why does every man and his dog want to connect to Facebook? Just because something is popular does not mean it is any good.

Errata

Tigsteroonie wrote: »

But will our Facebook identity be passed over to MoneySupermarket.com with our MSE alias in due course?

No thanks. No offence MSE, but I just don't trust the privacy aspect.

Hello Stalkers!

Me neither given the other Internet sites that contain All the MSE content.