Platform Updates: Facebook iOS SDK 3.8, Larger Images for Link Page Posts, and Custom Audiences Update

This week, we're releasing a new version of the Facebook SDK for iOS. We've also updated link page posts to display larger images and provided minimum size guidelines below. Finally, we've added the ability to reach your mobile users with Facebook ads by leveraging Apple’s standard advertising identifier, iOS IDFAs, in custom audiences.

Facebook iOS SDK 3.8 Released with Support for iOS 7

We've updated our Facebook SDK for iOS and samples to fully support iOS 7, Xcode 5, and 64-bit apps.

We're also making it easier for your app to handle permission changes. People can use your app from more than one device. They can also revoke or grant permissions to your apps from each of those devices. Unless you're syncing that information through another path, your app would not be aware of any permission changes until an authorization was requested. The result can be permission errors or redundant app switches to request permissions already granted.

Version 3.8 of the iOS SDK will automatically refresh permissions once a day so that your app can more accurately determine if additional authorization is required. This refresh will be batched with outgoing requests to avoid extra network round trips.

For more details and a list of other updates in our 3.8 release, visit our change log. You can download the SDK here.

Larger Images for Link Page Posts

We've increased the size of images in link page posts by 4x on mobile and 8x on desktop to help you drive better fan engagement. As part of this change, we've also made the aspect ratios for images consistent across mobile and desktop. We recommend the following steps to optimize your images for this new format:

1. Use images that are 1200 x 630px or greater for the best display on high-resolution devices. At the minimum you should use images that are 600 x 315px to display link page posts with larger images.

2. Use images that have an aspect ratio of 1.91:1. Try to keep your images as close to this aspect ratio as possible to avoid any cropping in News Feed.

3. Use the og:image tag to choose the image that you want to share. If you don't use the og:image tag, users can choose the image they want to post, giving them a chance to select an image that is poor quality.

For more details, please visit our guide on maximizing distribution for media content.

Mobile Advertiser IDs in Custom Audiences

Facebook offers the ability to define a custom audience for ad targeting. In addition to using, in a privacy safe way, current customers' emails, phone numbers, and Facebook UIDs, you can also upload and target specific types of IDs generated from your mobile app to reach relevant people on Facebook ("Mobile Advertiser Ids"). A few months ago, we announced App User IDs, which allow you to define and reach people that have take actions within your mobile app.

Today, we are excited to announce that you can also reach your mobile customers by leveraging Apple’s standard advertising identifier, iOS IDFAs. For example, you can upload a list of your existing customers' iOS IDFAs into Power Editor, and reach them with relevant information about your app such as an important update. The ability to upload Mobile Advertiser IDs (iOS IDFAs or App User IDs) is available in Power Editor or via our APIs. Go to our tutorial to learn about all of your options for how you may reach your mobile app users through our custom audiences.