Why do I need a Facebook application?

All third-party integration with Facebook occurs via a Facebook application (an application defined at developers.facebook.com), and every application is owned by one and only one personal Facebook profile. You could either develop and code your own service to operate your application, or you could use an existing service to act as your agent.

The SocialOomph service is the agent that acts as the operator of your Facebook application.

This arrangement means you own the Facebook application that posts to your Facebook properties, and you use SocialOomph as the software engine to do that posting for you.

It holds the following benefits:

• The Facebook application belongs to you and only you can use it to publish posts to Facebook.
• Your Facebook newsfeed posts are custom-branded with your Facebook application name and URL in the "via" part of the posts.
• If any Facebook application (other than your own) that also uses SocialOomph as an agent is restricted, deactivated, or deleted, your Facebook application and your past Facebook posts are not affected. In other words, you are insulated from undesirable posting behavior by other users and from erroneous account deactivations by Facebook.
• Your Facebook application's reputation (that Facebook uses to impose restrictions and deactivations) relies solely on your posting behavior and is not affected by any undesirable posting behavior of anyone else.
• For Facebook the benefit is that your Facebook application operates within their rules and application management environment. In other words, they can enforce their policies and rules on your application with no impediment. Undesirable posting behavior can be identified and shut down much faster because it's not cloaked by the posting behavior of thousands of other users.
• For SocialOomph the benefit is that erroneous deactivation of personal profiles, deactivation of or restrictions imposed on a Facebook application, and undesirable posting behavior by one user does not affect our entire user base.