Facebook Makes Its Markup Extensible
Facebook announced a major change today to the proprietary language that all Facebook apps are written in; it will now be made extensible with custom tags that can be shared across applications. The feature will initially be available only on site but will eventually be rolled out to all Facebook Connect supporting sites around the web. We're excited about it but wonder how open it will truly be.
FBML, or Facebook Markup Language as it's called, was intended to ensure that malicious apps couldn't inject nasty code into the browsers of users. We assume that the new markup will have security taken care of by server side processing and this could enable an explosion in feature sharing and code efficiency.
Showcase examples at launch of the feature include:
- iLike offers tags that let you display favorite songs and playlists, complete with controls to listen, dedicate, watch, and make ringtones of those songs.
- Causes offers custom tags that let you show your support for your favorite
causes by displaying badges that invite users to join and support the cause. - Graffiti offers tags that let you draw and display graffiti.
- * Visual Bookshelf offers tags show the most popular books by category.
These tags should be reusable and offer some amount of customization, but the source code doesn't appear to be open. We'd love to see these tags expose their code to developers so they can be more easily altered for reuse in different ways by different apps.
Though there have been thousands upon thousands of apps built on the Facebook platform, many of them are of poor quality and have suffered since the company instituted a site redesign for quality control. Though effective app design is a competitive advantage for numerous apps that are making a shocking amount of money from ads and micropayments, we believe that at least some developers would be happy to share their best practices in the form of open, editable tag code if they were given the opportunity.
We'll see if that happens or if Facebook remains an essentially closed ecosystem, despite this big move made today. Read more about it on the Facebook Developers' Blog.
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Pittance. Lip service. Does nothing to change anyone's opinion of the misery Facebook injects into the world with it's proprietary EVERYTHING walled garden.
( Hey I am feeling creative today! Normally I would just type Facebook = FAIL )
:P
Posted by: Todd | January 13, 2009 11:22 AM
Facebook Air - now with only 50% less oxygen than generic air, but people will still buy it because the packaging is so convenient...
Posted by: Jean-Marc Liotier | January 13, 2009 11:46 AM
As a developer of Facebook apps, I'll put in my cents as being "optimistic" about the new custom tags.
Especially for more the integrated FB apps and campaigns, we often end up jumping through all kinds of server-side hooks to get information back-and-forth to the FB App page... primarily working around the FBML limitations.
In particular, I'm hoping:
1. We can use these custom tags a "pseudo mini-APIs" to external sources - as well as between a brand's multiple apps within Facebook
2. The performance gains they mention are realized... we battle FBML rendering times constantly.
Posted by: Kevin Tate | January 13, 2009 12:29 PM
As a user of facebook in networking, I will tell you that I am a customer as long as I feel that the applications are safe. Digital security has to be the highest priority for the whole phenomenon to be sustainable. Otherwise, it'll go with the Edsel.
Posted by: Thomas Whitney | January 13, 2009 12:51 PM
Oh wow..now we can get vampire bite spam with iLike greeting songs attached. Lets move on to something that adds value in our lives. Facebook = BIG Bubble!
Posted by: Adam | January 13, 2009 1:44 PM
i am trying to make a new app for facebook :) i hope i can do as soon as posible and i can share with you jane
Posted by: gitar FiyatlaRI | January 13, 2009 4:04 PM
The Elephant in the room
If you are an Open Source Developer or Content creator (If you are a member of either service you are a content creator) you should not use Facebook.
By using Facebook you are essentially raising the value of their company and their application Facebook is a closed source content silos that does not allow you to control the content that you create.
Facebook does not put the content creator/members at the top of their pyramids when thinking about revenue models. Facebook puts their Facebook first above the members and communities that have given them value and revenue.
If you are a developer you may be able to make some money by creating applications for Facebook ; but I do not believe that Facebook will ever allow your application to eat into their user base or their revenue. Because Facebook is a closed source companies that have the ability to literally cut you off by changing the code/api or by using their proprietary knowledge to build an application that you can not possibly compete with.
As a coder understand that when you build and extend Facebooks propitiatory platforms that you undermine the longevity of the Open Internet.
Content owners and Developers do not help closed source companies (Facebook) in their goal of creating another closed source content trap that will extract hundreds of Millions on dollars from their member and developer communities and give nothing back in return.
Posted by: william | January 13, 2009 11:46 PM