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I have a client who has a web site that requires membership. He wants to allow his users to find other users with whom they might have a existing friendship/relationship on a social networking site (Facebook, Twitter, etc).

Does anybody have any experience with this type of problem? If so, what to packages/APIs did you use? Right now I'm evaluating Janrain and Gigya, but we're still in the decision-making phase so I'm open to other solutions. This is mostly a JSP shop, but again, we're open.

Thanks in advance, Chip

ksmm
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  • It might be useful to know what language or framework you're doing the site in. PHP? Django? Ruby on Rails? This would affect what SDKs are available to you. – jonescb Jan 21 '11 at 16:17

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Both are good, and come with best practices. Each one has a documentation page. I prefer Gigya since it's easy to learn and the flow is more logical.

Janrain Documetation

Gigya Documentation

priyabagus
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I assume you mean visitors should have the ability to find existing friendships before their decision to register (ie. they'll be more inclined to register if they see [x] number of friends are already using the site).

If you're just interfacing with Facebook, try using their Facepile plugin. It's a quick way for non-registered users to see which Facebook friends are using the application (assuming a valid FB session).

If you're interested in multiple networks, Gigya is a really good solution. One feature you might find useful is their getFriendsInfo() method. If you set the siteUsersOnly parameter to true, Gigya will only return social network friends who are also registered users of the site.

Regardless of your choice, one piece of advice is to make sure visitors understand they aren't registering for the site just by signing-in with their social network account and checking for friends. For some users, this distinction isn't always clear.

Hope some of this helps.

Bitman
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