Social networking site Facebook opened up an application programming interface (API) today in a move that’s aimed to set it apart drastically from the far more hostile ecosystem of market leader MySpace.
Originally exclusive to college students, Facebook opened up membership to users from select corporations in April. The company reportedly turned down a $750 million acquisition offer in March. If Facebook can succeed in doing with social networking what Salesforce.com is aiming to do with enterprise CRM and its AppExchange, it could really put meat on its bones and go up for sale as more than just a huge data set.
The current version of the API does not support actions to be performed directly on the site but opens many possibilities to interact with user data off site and in desktop applications. At launch both commercial and noncommercial web applications are allowed to make up to 100,000 calls to the API in a 24 hour period.
A limited third party API for Facebook was released by Andre Cohen in January. Apple has also provided a desktop widget to search Facebook profiles for almost a year. Sarah C.P. Williams wrote yesterday about a new Firefox plug-in from a company called StudioLD (warning, annoying Flash page) that changes the look and feel of Facebook. In other words, a clear demand from the developer community for access to Facebook data exists.
The Facebook developers page highlights one application called Facebank that keeps track of debts and shared expenses among Facebook users. The Facebook Developers discussion board already has more than 500 members and we expect to start seeing Facebook mashups being developed quickly. A handful of projects based on the Facebook API have already been posted to the new Google Code depository.
This thing is gaing attention really quick. It already has it’s IRC chatroom on #freenode.
This is a brilliant move by Facebook. In June I suggested Friendster should be doing the same thing if they want to be a contender — http://www.vestedventures.com/.....bsite.html
I’m amazed at how fast developers jumped on this one. Facebook made a great move by releasing an API; they’re basically going to get free functionality added to their service.
MySpace could learn a thing or two, especially after they shutdown sites (singlestat.us) that were effectively promoting them by offering new functionality.
Great move by Facebook, but even better is the timing. They opened the API, which they knew would get the blogoshpere buzzing, on the same day that their rival Xuqa did an entire redesign/relaunch of their own site. Smart move to preempt the competition.
Awsome move from the site, i think this is something that could give Facebook the edge over MySpace in the long run.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens.
No offense to Xuqa, but Xuqa is barely a competitior. Timing was probably a coincidence… after all, how many announcements for social networks are there these days?
Facebook is amazing….for those of you who are a bit removed from the college scene, kids check it far, far more frequently than their email. This is a great move on their part, I’m still shocked they turned down almost 200 million more than myspace got
Speaking of Facebook Apps…
Sometimes you Just Want to Know Who Your Hottest Friend is…
My buddy made a facebook application that let’s you give your facebook friends a thumbs up or down…What do your friends think of you?
http://www.kalafarski.com/hottest/