Facebook "like" functionality in a kiosk

Question

I've been tasked by a client to write an application for a kiosk (think checkin machine at an airport) and one of the options for the users is to "like" my client in Facebook. I've read the plugin documentation and I am able to render a "like" button on a browser page, but then facebook pops up a login web browser window... my kiosk application can't have web browsers popping up (since it's a kiosk).

How can I successfully send a like request with little to no browser UI for the user? Any thoughts?

Thanks, ~Bill

Answer 1

The fundamental problem is that the user, in order to "like" something, must be authenticated with Facebook.

In the case of a public kiosk, if it is the deployment scenario of your app, I think that logging in with the Facebook credentials is not a good idea: would you trust a public kiosk and log in to Facebook with it?

I don't know if the Facebook authorization dialog can be embedded in an iframe or something like that, but I think that maybe the context is not appropriated for a like button.

Answer 2

A 'like' in Facebook is a direct link between a given user and some thing on Facebook. You can't have anonymous "likes", hence the login prompt. Given the preoccupation of some people with the number of friends and likes, if anonymous non-attributed likes were allowed, some people could spam the hell out of the system and give themselves trillions of likes for the most mundane drivel.

Answer 3

You can develop an application to restrict the user solely to the desired Facebook page to allow users to log in on the spot. You can see that a company Konnected, LLC developed the Facebook Like Machine and Facebook kiosk.

It sounds as though this could solve your problem. Here is the FB page.