Ask HN: Any advantages of Facebook canvas app vs standalone websites?

9 points·parth16··3 comments

I'm building a Facebook application and I'm trying to find if there are significant advantages of having it inside Facebook's canvas and not as a standalone website.

Any thoughts would be really helpful!

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If your application relies typically on user's facebook data like pictures, friends etc, it makes more sense to have it inside the FB canvas. Also, your app is likely to pickup more traction when it is inside FB. You can focus on the development rather than worrying about how to get advertisers in. Once it is viral you can probably put up a link to the stand alone website inside the canvas.

The biggest one is better conversion on the landing page, users are more likely to install your application since they're "on Facebook" than if they get redirected to a third-party website.

- Canvas apps can be bookmarked (i think they're bookmarked by default), which means your users will easily find them

- Facebook can ban your domain for spam at any time, and then go figure. We had a simple redirect from our registered domain to our canvas facebook game, and somehow facebook considers it spam for months now.

- Users like the cozy environment of the facebook canvas around them, they find notifications instantly, chat etc.

- Consider this: Zynga launched farmville.com , but it didn't get traction so for their next game Cityville, they did not launch cityville.com

I believe there is a significant advantage to stay on the canvas. That means though that your app must give them 30% of your virtual currency revenues, and you can only use their approved advertisers. However, you can go via the third route, create a landing page for your external website in the facebook canvas, so you at least get the bookmark link.

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