synchronize comments and likes

[diplix]

had a closer look at the code of this plugin: add link to facebook

what it does is (among a lot of other stuff):

• poll the facebook API for facebook comments and likes for each wordpress posts that has a facebook id, or rather a link to a facebook post (and thats not older than 7 days). something that posts created by the facebook.class.php always have (saved in post_meta original_guid)
• the API response is saved with the Transients API (for 15 or 60 minutes, depending on the setting)
• a content hook (the_content) renders the likes ("xxx, yyy liked this post") and the link to the facebook post ("View on Facebook") into the content (add-link-to-facebook-class.php, line 101 and 1982)
• facebook coments are added as wordpress comments (there's also an option to sync wordpress comments back to facebook, which is not really a good idea)

i really like the idea to implement something like this in a more generic way, so that it works for facebook, instagram, maybe even with twitter replies and favs. it would add context to reclaimed posts and we could, for example determine, popular posts across networks, just by counting comments and a like/fav count. i also think a one way street is fine, since reclaim is not aiming at doing POSSE (post on your site, syndicate everywhere), but trying to get our own content out of the silos, without neglecting the viral and social strenght of those silos/networks.

each post created by the reclaim plugin has the original_permalink or original_guid saved in a post meta thing. so actually the only challenges would be

• to poll the api for comments and likes on a scheduled basis,
• cache those results (keep the load low),
• post new comments if there are any and
• render them

if a user deletes his or her comment beneath the original, the copy should probably also get deleted.

what the add link to facebook plugin does, can be seen in this testpost: http://architektu.rlog.de/archiv/2014/01/21/435/

[diplix]

if you use wp-social, facebook comments and twitter mentions are pulled in. the facebook and twitter mods provide wp-social with the neccessary meta data.