The Open Facebook

I've had a Facebook profile since early last year, but I don't use it very much. That's slowly changing as my network grows and there is more stuff I can do there. I am hopeful that I'll be using it a lot more soon because Facebook is now an open platform. I spent about a half hour this morning adding some of my favorite apps to Facebook and now I have Twitter, last.fm, and MOG on my profile.

I had a few more, including iLike (which is apparently the most popular new application on Facebook right now). But I took iLike off my profile because it didn't do anything for me. I couldn't see the songs I've been listening to, my friends, or any of the things on iLike that I find useful.

I got last.fm on my profile thanks to my friend Jeff Jarvis' son Jake who built a last.fm application for Facebook. I found out about that on Techcrunch last night. Now this totally rocks because it shows how open this whole open Facebook ecosystem is. A young guy (I think Jake's the same age as my daughter Jessica) who has nothing to do with Facebook and last.fm other than being a user of these two services built a last.fm widget that I can use for my Facebook profile. Thanks Jake!!

Take a look at the middle part of my Facebook profile:

You are starting to see hints of this blog emerging on my Facebook profile. There are my most recent posts showing up as notes. You can see my Twitter message, and two cool music widgets, last.fm and MOG. Interestingly, MOG and last.fm disagree about what I've been listening to most recently. I gotta figure out why.

I've got two thoughts on this whole thing.

The first is I like the way Facebook has chosen to open up. It's more like the way Firefox allows extensions and less like the way MySpace and others allow embedded code. I've got nothing against the MySpace approach. That's what I use on my blog as well and embed code has moved the web forward in amazing fashion. But an open API is possibly going to be more powerful for some apps than embed code. It will be interesting to watch how this all plays out, but I am betting Facebook's gonna get some really cool apps very quickly with this approach.

The second is that I don't yet see my social network at Facebook interacting much in these applications. Maybe I've chosen the wrong ones to install. My Facebok social net will be notified via the mini-feed that I've added these apps to my profile, but beyond that what happens?

Why can't Twitter be more tightly integrated? Why can't it power my status message so that all my friends on Facbook see when I change my status via Twitter.

Why can't my Facebook friends engage with my last.fm and MOG widgets? Why can't they favorite the songs they like and message me in Facebook about that?

I am sure that's coming. Maybe some of the other Facebook apps already do stuff like that.

There's a chance that someday, Facebook will be the preferred place to read this blog because of all the social apps that will be built around it. You can already read this blog at Facebook but few people, if any, do that currently.

Mark Zuckerberg says he wants Facebook to be the social operating system of the web. That's a grand ambition. But I like it. Because its something Google isn't and is never going to be (unless they buy Facebook). At this point, nobody is closer to that vision than Facebook and by opening the system up this past week, Mark has taken a big step forward and is moving closer to that vision for sure. Well done.

Comments

[Erik Schwartz]

This is what My Yahoo! should have become.

Kudos to Mark Zuckerberg for sticking it out. I was sceptical upon hearing the rumors of turning down $2 billion. I thought they were being greedy. I was wrong, they had bigger ideas and a plan to execute them.

Good for them.

[Knox]

I'm not very knowledgeable on Facebook, but all I see on your profile is a Van Gogh-ish picture of you, your name with no link, and a link to MIT alumni. Is your profile set to private?

[Marco Hansell]

I couldn't agree more. The moves Facebook has made are incredible. I can only assume that we'll see more dynamic interaction, and even cross platform integration with the API's in the system.

A lot of it centers around how well...and how much Facebook wants to use the feed system.

My network is interacting a lot with these applications, and just about one in every 4 feed updates are about someone adding a new application. Allowing some of these apps to integrate/takeover Facebook's template updates would be interesting. Like Twitter replacing your normal status update. Or the Snapvine commenter being added into your normal comment section, with users being notified via feed when you receive a voice comment.

All in all, I'm sure Mark and other developers are thinking about these things. I for one am already plotting and planning :-)

If I were any other social network out there , I'd be taking a hard look at my relationship with the development community...this move Facebook has made will become harder and harder to compete with once it truly penetrates the social community.

[david hyman]

fred, one major issue with how apps interface with facebook is that facebook does not let our apps dynamically update on their own. this is in part due to the fact that they don't want any flash (multimedia) autoplaying. as a result, data served is also seriously cached and only updated periodically throughout the day.

[Bill Erickson]

Fred, if you update twitter from within facebook, your updates will be published throughout facebook (main newsfeed and the one on your profile). But if you update it any other way, like through twitter, im, or sms, it doesn't push out this update.

We're working on an app that should really take advantage of the social network of facebook. We originally built it using the old api, where you can have users log in through facebook and then pull their info out to our own site, but now we're rebuilding it to run within facebook.

[RBA]

The social operating system of the web from a US-centric viewpoint, at least for now.

[lawrence]

Great point about iLike Fred. The Facebook iLike seems to have nothing to do with the destination site iLike. I couldn't even figure out how to synch my accounts. It's odd that they're the runaway winner so far, when they didn't even bring any of their best functionality to Facebook.

[Philip Baddeley]

Is this an open invitation to join you on Facebook? I am never sure if Facebooks is private or public space. It would be great to read your blog on Facebook. Please let us know.

[Ivan Pope]

f8 Terms and Conditions: don't believe the hype
http://www.vecosys.com/2007/05/28/working-with-facebook-f8-you-are-not-in-control-of-your-access/

[Brad Wiemerslage]

I'm hardly a huge facebook user (or social network user for that part), but instinct tells me that their new strategy is important. The facebook folks seem pretty sharp, so I'm sure they will work out the implementation details over time. My guess is that google will be putting a really big offer on the table soon if they haven't already.

[scotty the body]

well, i had to bite. i've done just about every other social network thingy. some have produced immense value for me (flickr), and others actually worked at getting me back in touch with lost friends (MySpace) -- so it's worth a whirl.

So far, I like it. Your post was the push I needed. I like the snappiness and the slightly open interface. I think they're just a nudge away from llowing the user to simply insert feeds and/or even pipes. Neat!

[Trevor Meyer]

Have you checked out Roshambull yet? Not the "most useful" app, but definately the most fun. My buddies and I have been playing for pride, credits, or to see who buys drinks that night.