Facebook and Twitter Connect, Pingbacks
Thank you for taking the time to comment last week in response to our first release of Facebook and Twitter Connect. We've reviewed and discussed your feedback at great length. As a result, we'll be making major changes that address your concerns in the next release.
Facebook and Twitter Connect update
We understand and appreciate your privacy concerns. For this reason, we'll be modifying the comment cross-posting portion of the Facebook and Twitter Connect feature so only comments on public entries (those marked 'Everyone') can be cross-posted. Once we implement this change, it will no longer be possible to cross-post screened comments or comments left on Friends Only entries.
We also wish to address your concerns regarding the following issues:
- Your journal cannot automatically connect to your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts: LiveJournal does not know your Facebook or Twitter identities unless you specifically add this information to your Account Settings. If you do not connect your accounts, you cannot cross-post entries or comments, accidentally or otherwise. Though you still see the cross-post checkboxes when you post, they are completely disabled and cannot be selected. Only if you specifically choose to provide your Facebook or Twitter connection information will these checkboxes become active.
- Cross-posted comments pull only the comment, not the entry content: If you cross-post a comment on another user's entry, only the comment you write will be cross-posted. No additional content will be cross-posted to Facebook or Twitter. That said, we recognize that, if someone decides to quote a portion of a protected entry in a comment, this will be cross-posted too. It is for this reason that we'll be eliminating the ability to cross-post screened comments or comments on Friends Only entries. While we cannot control user behavior and nothing on the Internet is ever completely private, we want to do our very best to ensure that your private content is not cross-posted without your express consent.
- Cross-posted comments contain only a link to the entry: When a comment is cross-posted, the Facebook or Twitter cross-post will include the comment itself (or a short snippet thereof), plus a link to the comment URL. The comment URL will contain the username of the journal in which the comment was posted. Some of you have expressed concerns that, in the case of a Friends Only journal, the cross-posted URL would reveal the existence of a journal you intended to keep non-public. This is another reason we are removing the ability to cross-post protected comments. Once this change is made, only comments on entries that are marked public (i.e., 'Everyone') will appear in cross-posts to Facebook or Twitter.
We are aware that Pingbacks (a feature that is unrelated to Facebook/Twitter Connect) have not been functioning as intended. Some users have reported getting Pingback notifications even after they have disabled this feature. We are currently working to resolve this unintended behavior. We'll let you know as soon as this feature is functioning properly again. For those who are new to this feature, Pingbacks send an automated notification to a user when another user links to one of their posts. For more information, check out this FAQ.
Endnotes
Once again, we thank you, sincerely, for your continued support. We look forward to making improvements to enhance your LiveJournal experience. On a final note, we wish to thank ecctv for sending us the following gif.