Facebook Launches Developer API 30
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."
Free Content (Score:3, Insightful)
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 m
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I hate to compare the two services, but Facebook again h
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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
Too bad they killed VCard Export (Score:3, Interesting)
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 th
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Take a look at people's e-mail addresses. It's a generated image, it's not a text/link anymore.
In addition, I've been pounding my head against a wall trying to get CURL to work with Facebook and it seems that they've taken quite a few measures to make sure this can't happen.
Re:Interesting...but... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Shudder.. (Score:2)
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Take note, Murdoch (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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I may have to tinker with this API a bit.
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Re:Take note, Murdoch (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Less Ads (Score:2)
Facebook is actually usable, whereas myspace is probably the worst site on the internet.
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Facebook v. Myspace (Score:2)
I'm a bit more wary of Facebook though, it will sell your data to the highest bidder, whereas Myspace has a slightly higher regard for its users privacy.
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With regards to the security; I am sceptical about Facebook; having heard some CIA link type stuff. On the other hand, Myspace seems much more underhanded (I don't trust News Corp for a second) and some of the stuff
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The API... (Score:2, Funny)
FaceBank, wait a minute (Score:1)