Comments for Facebook to Offer Data Storage?

Facebook to Offer Data Storage?

2007-09-17T23:09:17Z

Rev2.org is reporting that buried deep in the Facebook Developer wiki is mention of a Data Store API hinting at Facebook's possible intention of offering data storage to app developers. The wiki page was updated this morning to announce that the service is now in open beta and is accessible by any application (any app developers out there want to shed more light on this one?).

Just this afternoon I wrote about platform definitions floated by Marc Andreessen, who called Facebook a level 2 platform -- or a "plug in API." It seems like Facebook might be transitioning into what Andreessen would call a level 3 platform -- one that "handles everything required to run your application on your behalf."

]]> People actually began noticing the Data Store API back in August when Facebook employee Haiping Zhao first published the page in the Developer wiki, though it only just came out closed beta this morning. When it first appeared Marc Canter noted that it would be in competition with Amazon's S3 service, which is a popular storage option among Facebook application developers (and indeed among many online app developers).

While it's probably smart for Facebook to provide data hosting capabilities and lock developers into the platform even more tightly, for that same reason I'm not sure it makes sense for developers to build apps that rely so heavily on a single platform. If you store you data off site, you can more easily extract your application outside of Facebook, as Where I've Been has done.

As AllFacebook points out, Facebook's acquisition of Parakey earlier this year, points to their desire to become a web OS. Data storage capabilities for platform developers (and users) is a step in that direction.

Comment from simon on 2007-09-20

2007-09-20T11:55:44Z

well written, affectionate, and interesting blog.
I thought about including a link to your site on my blog.

if you ever get the chance, come visit me back

Best,
Simon

my blog is www.BrawnyHunk.com (not nearly as superficial as it sounds ;-) )

Comment from Valerie Coffman on 2007-10-08

2007-10-08T22:03:53Z

Well, in a sense, they've always offered data storage in the form of the fbml which you can set and get for each user. Sounds crazy, but for a very simple app, you could find a way to write all the info you need there, and just retrieve it as xml each time.... I'm writing an app right now that does this, and have been tossing around in my head whether this is crazy, but if you're going to trust them to store your data in a database (with a wonky api) you might as well trust them to store it as xml in the user profile.