When should use use "FB.Connect.showShareDialog" instead of "FB.Connect.streamPublish"?

Question

It looks like they do virtually the same thing for simple posts. Do they show up in different place in Facebook? Any ideas?

Answer 1

Using FB.Connect.streamPublish you are allowed to specify attachments (image, flash, mp3), action_links, and a user_message_prompt. The posting to their Profile may be more engaging if you go this route.

The FB.Connect.showShareDialog is mainly just a url that you pass in. Facebook loads that url to get the page title, and see if there are suitable thumbnail images specified on that page.

The main advantage of showShareDialog is that you can ask the users to click on "Send as Message instead" to send the link to specific friends. The default behavior is to "Post to Profile instead".

For basic uses, the two calls can be very similar, but they each have their own distinct capabilities too. I'm finding that I have a need for both in different cases.