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I am in the process of creating a Facebook Application, specifically a social game. The game requires that users upload a photo of their choosing. However, if the user doesn't have a photo they wish to upload, they would select one from a stock of photos. I am wondering if it is possible to allow users to select a photo based on the pages/activities/etc that they "Like". So for example, the app can be coded to have a selection of photos based on a users "Likes". If the user has "Dogs" as a like, then the app will automatically find pages on Facebook that have images of those likes and those could then be used in the game.

My questions in regard to this idea are: 1). Is this legal to do from a copyright aspect?

2). Would it just be easier to go on a site like Shutterstock, buy the rights to photos and manually create the database of photos that way?

3). Is it possible (design/coding wise) to create the method of finding relevant photos that I just listed here?

Patrick Bresnahan
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  1. I do not see a problem with copyright laws, but you should check with the company you are getting the images from; in this case you would check Facebook's policy. A simple search on there support site should give you an answer.

  2. This question rides on the answer of question #1. I'd say it would be more fun to integrate into Facebook rather than purchasing stock photos.

  3. Yes, it is possible to get these photos from Facebook Pages. You need to make use of Facebook's APIs. Click this link for Facebook Developers website. If you haven't used any APIs before they are pretty simple but you need to just spend a few hours becoming acquainted with them. Google has awesome APIs that are very simple to use and very fun to use.

Hope this helps. Best of luck!

nodebase
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  • Also, using Google APIs, you could grab the name of the Facebook Pages the user of your app "Likes" and use that as a string query into Google Images and grab those images straight from Google Images. You wouldn't know "EXACTLY" what images you'd be getting in the results but they'd be return things like "Dogs" for sure. – nodebase Jul 09 '12 at 20:33