Facebook Publicize format changed?

That’s correct. We’ve made some changes to Publicize, and Publicized will now look different.

While it’s not possible to revert to the previous Publicize look, we’re considering switching from a “WordPress.com” app to a “Jetpack” app, to make things less confusing. I’ll post here when I have some news.

I don’t think changing the name of the app will help. The most confusing thing about the new format is that it says
“Dan Tappan published an article on WordPress.com.”
and then labels the link as being from “WordPress.com” when the real host name was “dantappanphotos.com”, which is not even hosted on wordpress.com

Saying something like “Dan Tappan published an article on Jetpack” and then labeling the link “Jetpack” would be, if anything, more confusing.

It would be nice if you had an option to go back to just using what was entered in “Custom Text” as the link caption but I can edit that after the fact.

I guess I’ll have to test some other plugins to see if any provide the format that Jetpack used to – that was pretty much ideal from my point of view.

Saying something like “Dan Tappan published an article on Jetpack” and then labeling the link “Jetpack” would be, if anything, more confusing.

I completely agree. I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear enough in my last post. Just changing the name doesn’t do much, indeed. We’ll have to do more with that new Jetpack app.

+1 here. I totally second to what Dan had said here. I host my WP blog on my own hosting, and don’t want to confuse my readers with wp.com link which most of them probably never heard of… (I know it might sound unlikely, but that’s my world ?? )

It’s been 4 months now, do you have any news on this, Jeremy? Or anyone else?
Thanks.

Edit: The text changed to WordPress w/out the .com, but it still links to wordpressdotcom profile @facebook. IMO it’s still too confusing and/or agressive ad.
I assume, there are no plans to do any further step to let us avoid this completely, right?

I just installed this plugin and must agree with the complaints of this format. Linking back and naming “WordPress” instead of “My Blog Nmae” is extremely confusing to my readers. If I cannot at least alter this in some way, the plugin is causing more harm than good.

EDIT: It does something similar to Tumblr posts. Links you to WordPress, not your blog.

I assume, there are no plans to do any further step to let us avoid this completely, right?

Linking back and naming “WordPress” instead of “My Blog Nmae” is extremely confusing to my readers. If I cannot at least alter this in some way, the plugin is causing more harm than good.

We’ve indeed renamed the app “WordPress” instead of “WordPress.com”, but I’m afraid we won’t be able to use your blog name or change the link to point to your own blog, as that Facebook application is used by all WordPress.com and Jetpack site owners. To use your blog name as the application name and set up a custom application link, you’d have to create your own application, and thus develop your own Facebook plugin.

Publicize was built to offer you a simple way to automatically publish your posts to Facebook, without having to create a Facebook developer account and create a Facebook app. That’s why we use a single application.

I hope this clarifies things a bit.

Hi Jeremy,
first of all thank you for your kind reply and patient approach.

If I understand correctly, the naming bottleneck is the facebook application or what the facebook API allows or rather does not allow. Now, in theory, would there be any way to hook this around? Let’s say, the Jetpack in defaut mode would work through the general “WordPress” Facebook app, while if anyone would want to there would be an open guide how to set up an individual connection application. The Jetpack plugin would just have to allow this (e.g. via dashboard?) and some setup-guide for FB app would have to be written down.

Or am I missing something?

the naming bottleneck is the facebook application

Correct. The name and URL come from the app used to publish the update.

Now, in theory, would there be any way to hook this around? Let’s say, the Jetpack in defaut mode would work through the general “WordPress” Facebook app, while if anyone would want to there would be an open guide how to set up an individual connection application.

Jetpack Publicize wasn’t really built to allow publishing from different Facebook applications. We built the module to provide an easy way for blog owners to automatically publish to Facebook; setting up your own Facebook application doesn’t really qualify as “easy”. ??

Now if you’re up for it and if you have a developer account on Facebook, I believe the Facebook plugin offers exactly what you’re looking for:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/facebook/

That plugin should allow you to hook your own Facebook application to your WordPress site.

Jeremy, thank you for your responses. The one part I don’t understand is that the behavior we are complaining about with respect to the URL is a change. When I first started using the Jetpack Publicize it correctly (IMO) used the URL from my site when it created the link. Was the change in behavior the result of a change on Facebook’s part? If not, then it clearly is possible to get the name of the site into the post from a common app.

I don’t really care whether the app name is “WordPress” or “Jetpack” or something unique, but the the link going to the wrong place seems like a pretty serious deficiency. It’s obviously preventing a lot of people from using that feature. Currently I enable Publicize for Twitter and G+, which do more or less the right thing, and publish links on FB by hand.

The one part I don’t understand is that the behavior we are complaining about with respect to the URL is a change.

That’s correct. When Jetpack Publicize was released, all updates were created as links, because Facebook didn’t offer any advanced options when publishing an update with an app. So all your posts looked like someone sharing a link.

But a few months ago, Facebook made a lot of improvements to the Graph API, thus allowing app developers to push custom updates to Facebook. There are a few examples here:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/creating-custom-stories/

These custom stories are more visible in Facebook’s newsfeed, and are well integrated with Facebook. For example, if you were to publish a post using the Image Post Format, that post won’t appear to be just a link when published on Facebook; a large version of the image will be available, and it will look a lot more like a picture that would have been directly uploaded to Facebook.
Here is an example (shameless plug, I love sharing pictures of my daughter ?? )
https://i.wpne.ws/V1TS

This format is more visible on your friends’ feed, and drives more Likes.

Facebook still allows the app developer to define an external URL and a title, but the app name is always displayed:
https://i.wpne.ws/V1Wv

Other apps use the same format, but with other custom actions, like “Check-in”:
https://i.wpne.ws/V0sS
https://i.wpne.ws/V1WL

It’s obviously preventing a lot of people from using that feature. Currently I enable Publicize for Twitter and G+, which do more or less the right thing, and publish links on FB by hand.

I understand that this format cannot fit everyone’s needs. But I’m afraid you’ll need to create your own app to be able to use a custom app name and app link in your updates. Facebook doesn’t offer any option to customize the app name and link for each update. These values are unique for all updates pushed through your app.

I hope this clarifies things a bit.

Thanks a lot for all your clarification efforts, @jeremy. It sounds like there is no way for you guys to handle this the way we would want it to work and that this is all Facebook’s fault ??

So far, I consider this case to be closed.