As we speculated this weekend, Facebook has opened up its activity stream through a new API for developers. Now any developer can create new applications incorporating the real-time stream. One of the first apps to take advantage of this new API is Seesmic Desktop, A Twitter client which is now adding your Facebook feed through this API (something Tweetdeck already did in the past through other more restrictive means). Facebook has also created its own desktop notification client to demonstrate what can be built with the API.
I just got off the phone with Ethan Beard, Facebook’s director of platform marketing, who tells me that the entire feed will be available through a single API call. A developer could recreate the entire Facebook home page if he wanted to or take parts of the feed and remix it to make something more interesting. For starters, I’d expect most Twitter clients to add the Facebook stream as an additional option. On Tweetdeck, for instance, you can read your activity stream, but you cannot respond in-line. The new Facebook Open Stream API is two-way, so it would allow developers to build apps which allow for that two-way communication inside the app.
This is a big deal. It potentially puts Facebook side by side with Twitter in all of these desktop and mobile client applications where a lot of the real-time conversation is happening and lets it compete head-to-head with Twitter. Whichever conversation stream is more interesting will prevail.
But beyond the arms race with Twitter, the stream API will open up the possibility for many new applications both within Facebook and outside its walls. An obvious one would be better filtering options for your activity stream. It would be simple to create an app that shows you the most liked or most commented on items in your stream, for example. Or now that stream can be plugged into various social search engines to give you socialized real-time results. Hell, if I could just search my own activity stream, I’d consider that a giant leap forward. But Facebook still only allows developers to cache data for 24 hours, so you wouldn’t be able to build a very powerful search engine or return results from more than a day ago.
Hmm this seems interesting. are there any restrictions on quantity? if not, isn’t facebook giving away a potentially valuable source of revenue?
Zuck is obsessed with sharing.
New newsfeed sucks, which streams only items explicitly shared. No spontaneous actions are streamed like old feed. Facebook should use other “activities” to their advantage, which its competitors lack.
oh, interesting. Nice moves improving API usability lately. question: what’s next?
The big news is why in the hell did Bridgestone Tires buy an ad on Techcrunch!!! WTF???
You just know, Gillmor wanted to write this post but he couldn’t fine any doses before Erick was able to write something coherent in 15 minutes.
Erick just posts his mad lib before doing any research on technical subjects. The corresponding comments correct his mistakes and he updates accordingly. Ingenious plan for doing nothing and getting paid.
it’s great and seems to work great. for an application to access it, the user has to explicitly provide access to their stream.
the problem is that facebook streams contain lots of spam. evil developers will even come up with applications that force users to publish things in exchange for gifts unless facebook enforces a strict policy on them
yes, developers need user’s permission to access their streams, per usual.
i don’t think they allow people to store the stream or parts of it for searching etc. developers are generally not allowed to store facebook data
Thnx, good point. I asked Facebook for clarification, and they confirmed that this is still the case. updated the post
It’s like partying at the playboy mansion and then you aren’t allowed to take any of the girls home.
Excellent news, and great timing. We’re working on a client project right now that needs to tightly integrate with Facebook, and this should make it a lot easier.
I honestly expected to wait a lot longer between rumor and reality.
This is definitely a great step forward (well overdue) and I’m guessing it didn’t require all that much effort on Facebook’s part.
Our suggestion to add more openness and ease of use by all: it would be great if there was a way to get a RSS or Atom feed of public stream items from a user (i.e. items the user would allow to be seen by anyone).
That´s a great step for all our Junior developpers
Great Deal
This is cool… this is going to kill myspace even more then it already has in my opinion.
ZOMG, LET’S DO MORE TO BE LIKE TWITTER!
“As we speculated this weekend”?
Do you mean “As the Wall Street Journal reported this weekend…”
Its interesting to see news sites that like to post a lot of talk about tradditional press failing yet leech off of them for breaking news on a regular basis.
No, I meant what I said. We linked to the WSJ story in our weekend post, which was still a speculative post. Hence “speculated.” I got my information for this post straight from Facebook.
Wow … I think I used an almost identical photo … guess great minds think alike
Does this mean I’ll get more or less Quiz notifications? lol
http://www.face...gid=87580108893
fooey!
Shut up.. LOL..
It’d be funny if someone rebuilt the pre-realtime feed with this API.
can’t wait
Probably 100% of Twitter users are Facebook users, while some small % of Facebook users are Twitter
wrong i use twitter but not facebook.
Duly noted.
Probably 99.999999999% of Twitter users are Facebook users.
I guess my domain http://www.friendstream.com fits in pretty well. I might take Ericks tips as a starter! Anyone have a better (niche) idea?
Holy crap. I didn’t check the weather yet are actually flying?
I need to look closer, but in order for it to compete with Twitter fully, you’d be able to see a “public timeline” of all users — and the timeline of users [even if you aren't their friend].
Does it allow any of this functionality?
The thought of having my twitter and facebook feeds intertwined on an iPhone gets me very excited.
Openness is (usually) a good thing for a site; it attracts outside interest and helps members feel more involved.
more great facebook news. Facebook could be worth $40 billion easily. I hope it goes public soon http://iamned.com/blog/ no recession. stock market keeps surging.
Don’t comment again.
Seems like a bad move to me. Facebook success thus far (compared to, for example, MySpace) has largely been a function of the fact that they’ve maintained control of the user experience. They’re voluntary giving that up, with no obvious benefit.
Anyway, good post Erick. I’m a big fan–just gave you an excellent review on Scribnia.
the only way to survive long-term. walled gardens for social networks don’t work.
While this is great news and the facebook river is going to run everywhere; the real difference that no one is talking about regarding the differences between facebook and twitter is this. The services are fundamentally different in how connections are formed.
Facebook requires friending: Twitter does not. It only requires following. This is a big distinction and difference in how much can be shared.
More of my thoughts here: http://facerevi...the-walled-dam/
Cheers!
You are entirely right. In fact, I am puzzled as to why people keep hitting this key of twitter vs facebook. They’re different and people use it for different reasons.
Yeah, this is a key distinction. Twitter’s real-time search will be a billion-times larger than anything Facebook would have. Can you even real-time search your Facebook newsfeed yet? [I'm sure someone will create it -- but yeah, it'll only be of your friends].
Since Facebook is a walled garden, they couldn’t just go ‘open’ — it’ll have to be an ‘opt-in’ thing for user’s to have their status updates public. Twitter is by default open, so yeah, Twitter still wins in this respect.
Very brave, very good, and very clever.
will Iphone fart app integrated wiht facebook? fart maker should do it. twitter also.
AMEN! This will help so many developers!
Awesome. Facebook makes another great move.
Facebook and Twitter are definitely more head-to-head after this one. They’re both chasing real-time refresh-less updates.. the question is whether people will keep going to their web sites or go directly to apps like Seesmic Desktop and Tweetdeck.. http://bit.ly/chasingupdates
So when is Seesmic Desktop going to update with the FB integration?
I am using on a PC and not seeing this integration yet?
We want real-time updates on FB.. and FB still leaves so much to be desired.. search of my own likes for example.. search of the photographs i “like”, et cetera..
FB needs to up it’s services else the move to “open up fb” may move users to 3rd party services..
or perhaps, that’s what they want.. they might offer features like “access to user’s data beyond 24 hours” if the developer/service is ready to pay FB. Revenue model, ah haan?
Wow, this is a big news. I hope applications like http://www.boilingpage.com will take advantage of it. Currently, http://www.boilingpage.com shows the hottest pages on the web based on how popular they are in Twitter. But now it can add Facebook updates too .. Awesome.
What’s the site again?
haha !!
There are all sorts of useful search applications one can build where your dataset vanishes after 24 hours. NOT.
Thanks cathedral, I’ll stick to the bazaar.
Facebook is on its way to soon become a major search asset => a “social real-time search engine” => major business model
This is a great move by FB to somehow supplant Twitter. It is better than doing nothing.
there is no future for these “clients” none, nada, zero – such a piece of sht commodity
I think, in 20 years, people will look back upon these amazing technological advances as the Era of Totally Useless Crap.
It is a shame that you cannot use the same search features that you can use in twitter in facebook. There is just so many possibilities for search that it should get way more attention. However, it is nice to see facebook catching up with twitter in that department
Heraclite’s Fragment 41 comes to mind:
You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.
so now we can – what does that mean for our lives? and what types of [3-D] interfaces for river management do we need as soon as the river deepens and widens.
aww sookie sookie now
Let’s get this xXx $ gUaP $ xXx
this is a very significant event as we are moving to open and liquid environments. This is a good move on Facebooks part and is going to really put Myspace further into the dust of irrelevance.
Twitters valuation just went up! i just cant figure out how they are going to create a meaningful revenue model.Its going to be an interesting challenge.
We are now supporting this in FriendBinder: http://blog.fri...support-in.html
Is it not true that most people still use only the core service and no apps or desktop/mobile clients? Is this really that big a deal for the average user?
Well i love having things mashed up into one nifty app. Good that facebook opened its API Stream.
Are there any facts or figures available about how introducing an API shows possitive effects in visits, PIs or whatever?