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Feed Forms

March 12, 2008BySasha Rush
As we move towards the new <a href="http://www.facebook.com/FacebookPreviews">Facebook profile</a>, one of our major goals is to 
improve the quality of feed stories. We want users to have a sense of ownership of their Mini-Feed and trust in the stories that 
are created on their behalf. Since applications make up such a large portion of feed content, our aim is to give developers a simple way 
to publish rich feed stories with user approval.
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With this goal in mind we are happy to announce the beta release of the feed forms, two new FBML primitives specifically 
designed for creating quality feed stories. These forms provide a standard interface for user-approved feed stories within the flow of an application.
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Multi-Feed form lets applications create social stories that are displayed in the feeds of a user and their friends.  Whenever you ask 
a user to enter friends within the flow of a canvas page, you can also request to publish interaction feed stories. This form creates 
the potential for an entire new class of interesting stories, including tagging, gifts, and public messaging.
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Feed form fills a similar need for publishing to a single user's feed. Instead of using the API to send stories, you can now change any 
form on a canvas page into a publish form. This creates an inline feed preview with the story. Since these stories are trusted, they 
are treated differently within feed and help us gauge an application's quality. We strongly encourage developers to use this method for 
stories users create within a canvas page.
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The <a href=" http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Feed_forms">technical specifications</a> for the two new forms are 
laid out in detail on the wiki. We're excited to see how you use these two new channels 
and are happy to hear any ideas for how we can encourage great feed stories. If you have any questions or comments, send us an email at <a href="mailto:developer-feedback@facebook.com">developer-feedback@facebook.com</a> and put <b>[feed forms]</b> in the subject line.

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