Facebook announced Friday a new JavaScript client library that will allow Facebook apps to be displayed on any website.
The client library allows users to make Facebook API calls from any web site and create Ajax Facebook applications on that website.
Wei Zhu from Facebook explains the benefits:
Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any web site that serves static HTML. An application that uses this client library should be registered as an iframe type. This applies to either iframe Facebook apps that users access through the Facebook web site or apps that users access directly on the app’s own web sites. Almost all Facebook APIs are supported.
Nick O’Neill at All Facebook writes:
Want to build your own social gaming platform that resides on your own website but leverages the power of users’ Facebook relationships? Now you can! There had previously been applications that could leverage the Facebook API prior to the launch of the platform but there are some significant differences now versus before. The first significant difference is the broader access to Facebook’s core features that the platform provides.
I’m not sure anyone saw this move coming, but Facebook may have just changed the game again by essentially becoming an application host. It’s a clever move by Facebook in a year its competitors will get more serious about offering platforms themselves.
ty, Thor. can you pls smite Zuckerberg with your mighty hammer when you have a moment?
if possible while he’s doing an interview.
Wonderful! This makes them even more open than OpenSocial - OpenSocial is confusing, this is crystal clear and easy to implement. Good move Facebook.
This is too late? Not really. At least they move it now.
Wow, time to seriously looking into developing facebook apps now.
I was wondering when those Facebook targeted apps will be available anywhere else. I’m not sure if that’s necessary a good thing. But hey, Facebook is expanding, who is surprised by that?
I’m well impressed with this Frontpage thing.
I can make web sites with it and everything.
Facebook? What’s that..?
The nightmare is growing…
PS. I’m going to have to look a little more closely at this jscript library thing. I’m not quite sure how FB can hope to maintain security if they require the app_key to be embedded in client side code.
Actually, I can’t see how they can hope to maintain any kind of data security with a purely client side library unless it’s a severly hobbled read only client (which it doesn’t appear to be).
I’ll reserve judgement till I’ve picked over the code but my initial reaction is WTF!? I’m already sick to death of “You’ve got a new super f***ing wall message, click here to see a pic of a cuddly puppy”*..
*ok, so they don’t tell ya it’s another stupid cuddly puppy pic until you’ve actually gone through the whole rigmarole of logging in but…
People always want to jump on the giants and say it is a fad or short lived. The reason facebook will stay relevent is because the interent is the place we are looking to for human connection. We live in a time when people are lsoing the ability to feel safe trusting people in a physical situation. In social sites we are able to make safer connections or at least in someways it is perceived as safer becuase a friend of a friend is a friend idea.
The problem with most apps is they are neat but not very useful. The key for facebook to long term market capture like google is to provide more useful apps. Things that really enhance people’s lives and saves them time.
You will start to see much more useful applications for facebook in the coming months.
And if you can’t figure out how to advertise in a specific market in facebook then you need help. The advatage of facebook is you can reach a very specifc market. You just have to do it right.
People always want to jump on the giants and say it is a fad or short lived. The reason facebook will stay relevent is because the interent is the place we are looking to for human connection. We live in a time when people are lsoing the ability to feel safe trusting people in a physical situation. In social sites we are able to make safer connections or at least in someways it is perceived as safer becuase a friend of a friend is a friend idea.
The problem with most apps is they are neat but not very useful. The key for facebook to long term market capture like google is to provide more useful apps. Things that really enhance people’s lives and saves them time.
You will start to see much more useful applications for facebook in the coming months.
And if you can’t figure out how to advertise in a specific market in facebook then you need help. The advatage of facebook is you can reach a very specifc market. You just have to do it right.
Proof positive that the intertubes are capable of vomiting.
LOL VelvetRaven
This is the Precursor to the global ad-Sense competitor… duh.
1. Parse the dom send back names and words, if there is also an fb app on the page leverage any demographic data it can provide.
2. feed the monster ad engine.
3. spit out ads on any page on the net.
very very clever..lets see if it works…
john, owner
vanguardsf.net
@Gebadia
Are you kidding me? Most friends of a friend of a friend you meet thru FB or the web in general, you wouldn’t give em piss to take a pill with. THAT”S FRIENDS?
what a yo yo
I was at Safeway this morning and saw a picture of the OpenSocial logo on a milk carton. Anyone else see that?
SPOT ON, AGAIN! This is exactly what I’ve been harping about on my blog. And truly ironicly just posted about the co-relation to the adoption of the PC pre internet was becuase of games, and now you mention Nick say “Want to build your own social gaming platform”.
Hell yes I say. Sure there will be business apps and the like…get real folks, it’s all about games, games, games. Facebook is creating a social gaming framwork and will dominiate just as the Nintendo with the Wii has made console gaming a social gaming experience in the living.
True, no reason to lie or promote my site or anything since it doesnt serve any adds but I write my post and then read this two minutes later lol.
Mar - you are absolutely right.
Nima: So you’re saying that their targeting is going to rely on there being FB content on the page? That doesn’t seem nearly as viable as Mar’s idea, which is still pretty narrow.
Google must ponder deeper on this latest move of Facebook. Yes, Facebook is coming to town, perhaps to trample Google one day. Hope Google still wins.
@EH
No , I’m saying it will rely on a whole bunch of other things as well but I think if there is an app on a page , they will mine that for information as well.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this mean developers will now be able to monetize Facebook apps using Adsense? That’s a pretty big deal- but that’s not even the half of it!
Theoretically, an entire website could be built as a Facebook app served up at it’s own address. So Facebook could become what Zuckerberg has always said it would be: the center of everything on the web, a huge identity repository that provides universal logins, proprietary programming languages, and most importantly, a home for all your personal, relationship, and behavorial data. In this scenario, Facebook wouldn’t launch a new ad network, they’d already be able to serve up ads all over the web. They would basically just be starting a rev share system. With all of that user data, Facebook’s payouts would be higher, banners would be better integrated into the layout, and they would be the obvious choice over separate networks.
I thought Facebook was crap when I first heard about but I joined anyway. After being a member I still think it’s crap. The whole apps feature is cool for kids or people who don’t have anything to do but as a grown man I don’t have time to sit around and rate my top movies, share my favorite mp3s with my friends, send online drinks and cocktails, or give hugs and kisses.
I thought Facebook was going to be more professional than that. I thought it was going to be a place where professional who didn’t want that cluttered up myspace thing-a-ma-giggy!
I use to hate myspace as well but at least I get good business leads and contacts off of it.
Facebook is another example of people buying into to hype and hysteria. Is email, myspace, IM,and RSS not enough for you people? Do you really want to be in contact and online that much?
If you want to be social try getting off the computer once in a while. Whatever happened to that idea?
By the way I am a developer by trade and I could greatly benefit from all this but I just hate how consumers will eat Microsoft’s corn out of their sh@#! I’d put the media in ther as well.
I believe that the applications are what makes Facebook so strong and popular. So I think this is both a smart move that probably send more people their way.
Anyone know a good facebook apps developer?
1) This is great for people that want to bring the FB community to your own site. No need to develop it on FB anymore. 2) FB takes the lead over Google’s Open Social and others on this area. Basically, this should cause similar developments from other FB “competitors”.
As a developer I love creating web applications that others can integrate into using an API. As a traffic generator, I love how easy it is to drive traffic from sites such as MySpace and FaceBook. As an end user, I HATE how FaceBook is abusing it’s user base, starting off as a clean alternative to MySpace for college users to keep in touch, and moving to be just an advanced myspace.
Eventually it will catch up to them, and when another alternative comes around, people will leave FaceBook in flocks just like they did MySpace.
Sakir,
Everybody is not equal to nobody. The question is enough. What has changed between now and before is three-fold. The experience is dramatically better than it used to be. Often as good or approaching as good as a standalone experience. Second ease of development, idea generation. You no longer have to create server side tools, or understand what is happening on the server to create your application. Third is that it is dramatically easier to monetize most ideas today, you simply have to create eyeballs and google sends you a check.
The question now is can you get enough eyeballs to make the venture worthwhile. Who knows for sure? So you try, and see how it goes. But this is not the same as it failed before it will fail again. Rather, the world has changed, and I think we can make it work. I don’t need 50, I need 3. I don’t need a server room, I need some clever API’s. I don’t need a marketing department or create friction with my users, I sell their attention to others. I think this will work.
How about being able to make your facebook profile an app and take anywhere?
ahah!
checkout my partywith me app and link to calendar and show the alphgeeks where you be a partying on the weekend etc etc - Stay cool all!
http://apps.facebook.com/partywithme/
Anyone know a good facebook app blocking extension for firefox?
Please God no. What have i done wrong!!!!!!!
This is perfect for Scrabulous users, and a good bit of leveraging for the Scrabulous makers against Hasbro. Exactly why Hasbro should hire those guys instead of putting them (and Scrabulous) out of business.
A really smart move…
http://www.spymac.com/details/?2330673
This is a bit distorting. This is just a JavaScript/HTML version of the existing API. You can already do all this with PHP, they’re just releasing a library for JS.
Interesting.. I wonder if the intent was to cut out widget distribution platforms like widgetbox or clearspring, that provide you with the code to put your widget on facebook.
Great. So Facebook widgets are going to be the new animated gifs….
http://www.bestfacebookapplications.com
Enough already facebook!
You need to fix your existing platform first BEFORE you start expanding it across the web. As a developer, it makes me mad that every week they keep adding new calls and features and breaking the existing apps. Just look at the list of bugs on bugzilla.
P.S. FIX YOUR FB:BOARD TAG ALREADY!
oh, brilliant. The rest of the web was were I went to get rid of stupid crappy facebook apps.
Facebook could not relish in the destination site social network success forever, their growth was being stymied by their own walled garden. So the next logical expansion - become a platform and start by opening it up in a controlled manner. This announcement, as Jeremiah Owyang confirms on his blog, is not new but rather an announcement targeted, in developer lingo, directly to developers - great strategy to keep FB constantly on the radar, but also provides an opportunity for other companies to let the world know what they are doing in this arena. The concept of a distributed network for content is just being realized by FB, but has been the foundation from the start of in2apps. More than distributed content, in2apps has a distributed web strategy for community and commerce as well. The in2apps SaaS platform enables any online publisher to deploy revenue-producing products like social network, classified, and advertising services and by default distributes the relevant profile and classified content across all publishers using an in2apps solution. The intent - to distribute and share affinity-based content, community, and commerce instantly. In addition, the in2apps three-level API will allow for unlimited distribution and rapid adoption by developers everywhere. Going beyond the FB approach of opening web services to access data from within the walled garden, in2apps is an entire development framework for building on-demand web applications that are delivered via a GRID computing environment - now that’s developmental freedom!
facebook is dead.
Ads are worthless and there is no business not even entertainment on there.
so that little feature of exporting apps via JS is useless.
I have yet to see a useful facebook app that has enough users
This is definitely something that could be big. One thing to again realize is that Facebook is still trying to find a way to really make money off this thing they have going. Im sure it is a very good step. Lets all remember how Google became Google with Adsense.
The value of one’s Facebook User ID definitely goes up with this announcement. If the web as a whole begins to tailor content to unique users using this technique Facebook is in a very enviable position. They have positioned themselves to be both the operating system and directory of the social Internet.
It is true that before the Facebook JavaScript announcement it was still possible to show the contents and interact with a Facebook application without having to go to facebook.com. In the past this could have been accomplished by writing code on the server that was somehow tied to the application. For example, CNN could have had code on their website that forced a Facebook login and told you who your Top Friends are and what Free Gifts you have.
This new JavaScript platform makes the process much easier. No server side code is required at all. The press release is also an indication that Facebook wants developers to create applications that function from outside facebook.com. Note: You must still login in to both Facebook and the application in order for this to function. Facebook is still in control of their data.
This JavaScript library also makes it possible now for any number of website to use a Facebook application as a widget on their site without the application creator’s permission. If you see the Free Gift widget on display at CNN.com it doesn’t take much work to ‘borrow‘ the JavaScript and put it on your own website. This can, obviously, be controlled but will require consideration by the application designer.
The restriction of “IFrame only” will likely require that applications are redesigned to take advantage of this new feature of the Facebook platform. Many popular applications are not built as “IFrame” apps. It is my opinion, though, that any application that wishes to be portable across the Facebook platform and OpenSocial will have to go IFrame eventually.
I will put together a more interactive example of this new Facebook Platform feature today. I will let you know what I find at http://www.thoughtlabs.com.
Pretty cool game, check it out.
Build a city and then get it populated
http://grechita.myminicity.com/
Now you can make a Geocities page and load up your entire facebook on it for everyone to see without logging in. :p
Block Facebook Apps
Auto-Block Facebook Apps 1.1
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/12393
This is crazy. Yet I’m impressed that Facebook could launch that initiative. The interesting thing would be that Scrabulous would still be playable and everyone would have one of that plugin into their personal website and start playing with their friends!
Sounds good to me! I’d love to have my friends updates as a widget on my iPhone…. sweet!
I’d like to get this on my site http://www.guitarbites.com
great idea. Will this work with every facebook app?
This is one of my new favourite apps. Just stumbled on it last week.
Anyone heard of blabble?
http://www.movietrailerlive.co.....oloBlabble