Facebook Launches Developer API

andrewman327 writes "The popular college social networking site Facebook recently unveiled an API open to developers. Programmers can utilize data from profiles, friends, photos, and events. An early example is FaceBank, which allows students to keep track of how much money they have lent their friends. The appeal of this platform will be slightly limited, however, as both developers and users must be members of Facebook. Facebook is the 60th most popular website for American websurfers and recently allowed high school students and employees of certain companies to join."

Comments

Free Content

[0100010001010011]

By releasing the API, people can add features to facebook without requiring any additional facebook developer resources.

Like the Piggy Bank. Facebook could have implemented this... or it could have let millions of adoring fans write it for them. There are a few ideas floating around the developer network. Imagine if Facebook had X ability. Well now it can be done.

Just like MySpace and Blogging... the people make the content. Look at all the great google maps api applications. Google spent 0 amount of time making those. The released the API and people wrote it for them.

Re:Free Content

[0100010001010011]

Agreed.

I in no way meant a jab at the FB developers. But one team can only do so much. I've been on facebook since the beginning. Since then features show up and 'just work.' I remember looking at the JS before they added the "In a relationship with" thing. I was like "wow... I wonder what they're going to do with this." Sometimes I find a feature and brag about it to my friends only to find out that it was added months ago.

Facebook trumps MySpace in more than the API arena. It's the type of website that I want complete conformity with. I don't want to dig through a black on dark gray color scheme while the latest top 40 is blaring in my speakers if I'm trying to find a friend's e-mail address. It has a googleish simplicity about it. Blue on blue color scheme with a white background.

And for all the people screaming 'think of the children' with facebook. My profile is set up as the most restrictive. I do not show up in searches (even for my direct full name). I do not show up as friends of other people. My 'wall' messages that I leave on other peoples walls don't even show up to people that aren't my friends. Photos tagged of me don't show up to anyone that isn't my friend, even if it's not my album. Facebook CAN be secure, it's just no one takes the time.

Re:Interesting...but...

[moosesocks]

Good question. There are a few valid uses, but from the look of it, it appears that the API's crippled such to prevent most of them.

After briefly glancing at the documentation, it looks like this is only good for pulling information from facebook, but not actually being able to make changes or add information.

Granted, this makes it a bit more secure and less prone to spam, but still.... an interface that would allow me to programatically upload photos or create events would be great.

Kudos to the facebook guys for making a social networking site that's actually usable.

Re:Shudder..

[Lurker2288]

You probably just need to relax a little. Maybe it should rub some lotion on it's skin before it gets the hose again.

Take note, Murdoch

[mattpointblank]

This is a lesson Myspace should learn. I use both sites, and here's why Facebook is better:

• Actual networking facilities. I'm not sure what the creators of Myspace think "social networking" means, but it definitely _does not_ mean a small box saying "______ is in your extended network" on an area of the profile nobody looks at anyway. And what does that even mean? There's no links to see your "extended network". Facebook, on the other hand, shows you how someone else is linked to you (eg, which of their friends are listed as yours) and lets you narrow down networks by class and college, or graduation year.
• Intelligent image manipulation. Facebook's gallery features allow you to upload a picture and then select an area of the image "containing" a person, which is then linked to that user's profile when the photo is viewed. On Myspace, you're lucky if the image itself loads.
• Better relationship definitions. Facebook allows you to specify how you know someone, what classes you took, when you lived together, and even if you're a couple. You can then click links to see your "timeline", showing courses you took, who you took them with, when you lived with people and where, and other stuff. Myspace? "an unknown error has occured".
• Not owned by News Corp. ...
• This new API. I can't imagine Myspace opening up any of their information for this kind of thing. I was pleased but not surprised to see stuff about open source on Facebook's new developer section. I can't see Myspace ever embracing any of the OSS concepts.

What Myspace needs to do is realise that it has more users, more information about them, less specifically linked, so thus it has more potential. They have the ideas (on the School forums they have mostly-unused bulletin boards for craigslist-esque classifieds) but without the implementation, they just look like amateurs.

Re:Take note, Murdoch

[Kadin2048]

Also, unlike MySpace, Facebook doesn't give me the urge to go out and stab people for making me try to look at their attempts to write HTML.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to let regular people design their own webpages needs to be put in front of a monitor, Clockwork Orange-style, and made to look at the results of their handiwork, forever.

Facebook does it right: you enter your information into little text blocks, and it generates the page. It's easy to search and link, because everything's categorized, and it doesn't encourage homicide.

Too bad they killed VCard Export

[Kadin2048]

That said, they also occasionally remove features.

A while back, they had a great feature: they let you download your friends' addresses and other contact information as VCard-format files, which you could import into your local addressbook.

This was brilliant. Frankly it was better than any LDAP-type or Active Directory system I'd used; and it meant that my local address book suddenly had stuff like postal addresses, birthdays, plus email addresses in it. I'd never had the time to hand-enter that stuff in the past, and Facebook was a one-stop directory for contact information. On my Mac, once I got the information from the Facebook export into Address Book, people's birthdays automatically got added to my calendar, too. It was just a really nice, integrated system. I expected that the next step would be to give some sort of an open API, so that you could connect directly rather than having to export as a file and import it on the client machine.

Instead, they killed the feature. Completely. It really ruined a lot of the usefulness of Facebook for me, because now if I want to use any of the information that's there, I have to retype it manually into my address book. I'm not sure what their motivation was for getting rid of it, if it was spam-related or if they wanted to try to discourage people from taking information out of the site, and then not having to come back to the site and view their ads as frequently, but I was pretty disappointed.

I'm hopeful that maybe with this API, they'll bring some of that usefulness back.

After all, what is a "social networking" site really, once you get past the buzzword-itis? It's really a very smart, well-organized, user-driven information directory (at least this is how most people use it). To be able to use something like your Facebook friends list as your Address Book when writing emails or anything else, would make a lot of sense.

The API...

[Lazbien]

Oh good... one more reason to return to the site more than the 22 times I do during the day already.