The New Facebook Login and Graph API 2.0

By Jeffrey Spehar

Today at f8, we introduced a new Facebook Login experience that gives people more control over the information they share with apps. We also announced a two-year stability guarantee for core products along with a new version of the Graph API to help you build, grow, and monetize your apps.

The new Facebook Login and the announcements below are available to all new apps starting today while existing apps have a full year to upgrade (April 30, 2015).

Giving people more control with the new Facebook Login

Facebook Login is a fast and convenient way for people to sign into their favorite apps without having to remember another password. In 2013, we updated Login to clarify when an app is requesting permission to share back to Facebook. This change contributed to a 10% increase in Login conversion rates over the past year.

Today, we're making additional improvements to Login based on people's feedback:

First, people want more control over sharing their personal information with apps. The new Facebook Login lets people edit the info that they provide:

We've also introduced a new design for when apps are requesting permission to post back to Facebook. This design highlights the audience that apps will post to:

Second, we've heard from people that they're often surprised when a friend shares their information with an app. So we've updated Facebook Login so that each person decides what information they want to share about themselves, including their friend list.

Third, people tell us that some apps ask for too many permissions. To address this, we're extending our existing App Center and Open Graph review process to Login. During Login Review, we'll look at and approve any permissions that an app requests beyond public profile, e-mail and friend list. Our goal is to help apps follow best practices while still keeping the review process fast and lightweight.

Finally, some people want to log into apps without sharing their Facebook information at all. With Anonymous Login, people can do just that. Apps will still get the benefit of Facebook identity verification and cross-platform sync, and people can easily upgrade to the full Facebook Login experience later on.

We know that you've spent a lot of time building a great app experience, and we are confident these changes will continue to help more people get into your app quickly and easily.

A more stable platform with Versioning and Graph API 2.0

At f8, we also announced API Versioning and a two-year stability guarantee for core products such as Login, Sharing, Requests, SDKs and frequently used Graph API endpoints. This means that if we make any changes to these products, we'll continue to support the previous version for at least two years. Versioning also gives you control over how you upgrade different instances of your app to use the latest platform features.

Important new elements of Graph API 2.0 include:

App-scoped user IDs: To better protect people's information, we will begin to issue app-scoped user IDs instead of original user IDs for people who first login to your app using Graph API 2.0. People who have already logged into your app will still retain their original user ID. If you operate multiple apps, the Business Mapping API lets you map the same person's ID between them.
Test Apps: An easy way to create and manage apps for use in testing, development and staging, test apps also serve as a central place to manage people's roles across all of your apps.
Social Context API: A simple way to surface a person's friends' activity alongside your content.
Tagged Places API: An easy way to build experiences using the places where a person has been tagged.
Tagging and Inviting APIs: New APIs to help you build interfaces for tagging friends in stories and inviting friends to use your app.

In addition to the above, we are removing several rarely used API endpoints; visit our changelog for details.

Sign up today for a Facebook Login Workshop near you

Over the next few months, we will host a series of Facebook Login Workshops around the world to help you upgrade your app for these changes. Sign up for a Login workshop today.