Facebook Opens Up: Lets Developers Access Status Updates, Notes, Links, and Videos
Facebook announced a major update to its API tonight that will allow developers to read and post status updates, links, and notes to Facebook. In addtion, Facebook now also allows third-party developers to create applications that can upload videos directly to a user's account. The service already had an API for uploading and viewing photos.
The company also announced that its users now share over 24 million links every month, and that more than 15 million of its users update their status every day.
Attacking Twitter?
As Nick O'Neill on the AllFacebook blog points out, this move can be seen as a direct attack against Twitter. The early success of Twitter, after all, was mostly based upon the availability of an API that allowed for the creation of a thriving ecosystem that went far beyond what Twitter's developers had originally envisioned.
Creating an Ecosystem
Looking at the announcement, Facebook clearly hopes that a similar ecosystem can develop around its new API. As an example, Facebook explains that it would now be very easy for a travel app to allow its users to create and share notes on Facebook with text, pictures, and videos.
Tearing Down the Wall
Facebook is slowly tearing down the wall around its silo and is starting to expose more of its data to the outside, which can only be a good thing. Just this week, Facebook also joined the OpenID Foundation. There are some legitimate questions about what this means for both OpenID and Facebook Connect, but it looks like Facebook is moving in the right direction.
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What sets twitter apart is its culture of users. They're what make twitter what it is. But on the other hand, Facebook has soooo many users that they're bound to establish a similar culture of status geeks. If that happens at anywhere near the rate of what twitter has experienced, they just might take over this space. Damn Twitter...sale immediately.
"Attacking Twitter": David and Goliath!
If you have a look at the Status Update API, you will notice that you can only get the current users status Update, not everyone else.
So at first, you might think ah ha! They are 'attacking' Twitter - when you think about it, that's not the case.
If Facebook were to open up their API so that anyone could access anyone's Status update - now Twitter vs Facebook begins! But they aren't.
If Facebook were to open up their API so that anyone could access anyone's Status update - now Twitter vs Facebook begins! But they aren't.
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istanbul üniversty Muhabbet
Great! More ways for people to indulge in their Facebook addiction
Good to see FB trying to change a little with the times and 'chipping' a block or two off the walled garden. They have a tremendous opportunity to really enlighten mainstream users to some of the potential uses of social networking. However they still have a lot of work to do in terms of penetrating the professional & technical collaboration circles.
As @Sherif & @Muhabbet allude to above, my gut feeling snapshot based on what I have seen is that there is a fundamental cultural difference between FB and Twitter/FF users. Most Twitter/FF users leave their profile open by default, whereas most FB users make their profile private forcing users to go through the friend process. In addition there is no way of receiving updates on users in FB unless you are a friend. On the other hand, in Twitter/FF it is as simple as clicking on Follow or Subscribe. I mostly use Twitter/FB for collaborating and keeping my pulse on technology and I've yet to hit a profile that has been marked private. FB on the other hand has been 99% private.
Hi, i know this is not the right place to say this, but i'm experiencing HUGELY annoying problems with Facebook at the moment! Since about a week ago, they launched some kind of wap site. Now, in the past, i have been able to use opera mini And my sony ericsson w850i to access the main Facebook site, add comments, And use my applications. Now all of a sudden, the site recognises my phone as a phone, And sends me straight to some mobile site where i am unable to even comment on status updates!! I cant even file complaints, as i am unable to click on anything! This is driving me insane as i am quite addicted to Facebook and i'm sure i'm not the only one out there who is experiencing this. I know the problem does not lie with opera mini, as they haven't sent out an upgrade in ages. This only started happening last week. Please please please fix this soon! I would so love to be able to access the main site through my phone again! Once again, i apologise for posting this here. I had nowhere else to go...
thanks.
As an example, Facebook explains that it would now be very easy for a travel app to allow its users to create and share notes on Facebook with text, pictures, and videos.
Thats really an awesome news from facebook. Facebook already introducing new options for developers. and this is really great.
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