Facebook Extends Platform to the Web
Posted by Nick O'Neill on January 26th, 2008 10:55 AMI surely did not see this coming anytime soon but Facebook just released their JavaScript client library than enables developers to extend their applications to their own websites. Rather than building your applications strictly within Facebook you can now extend the full functionality of the platform to your own website and leverage Facebook as the tool for managing members and their relationships. Somehow nobody has seemed to take note of this significant step.
Want to build your own social gaming platform that resides on your own website but leverages the power of users’ Facebook relationships? Now you can! There had previously been applications that could leverage the Facebook API prior to the launch of the platform but there are some significant differences now versus before. The first significant difference is the broader access to Facebook’s core features that the platform provides.
The second difference is that Facebook has now implemented the ability to leverage cookies to access a user’s data even when they are not at your application. Since this just launched last night, I have yet to see any applications (or websites) take advantage of this new feature. This is a huge step in Facebook extending their platform beyond the Facebook.com domain and letting people leverage the power of the “social graph” (I hate to use that phrase in this context but oh well).
Update
Debate has surfaced as to whether or not new functionality is being offered. In essence this is just the client facing version of what you could already accomplish via an iFrame on the platform. I would argue that what’s significant here is that Facebook has publicly released something that is intended to extend the platform to the outside. See Dan Farber’s post for more. The public is now aware of the possibilities to leverage Facebook outside of the main site and that is big news.
January 26th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Ohhh… so facebook’s going to become the entire social backbone to the internet instead of being a standalone website.
I was wondering…
January 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
[…] O’Neill of AllFacebook is reporting today that, without much fanfare, Facebook integrated their platform with their API. What does this mean to you and me? It seems that your favorite applications could possibly start […]
January 26th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
“There had previously been applications that could leverage the Facebook API prior to the launch of the platform but there are some significant differences now versus before.”
Sorry Nick, but I’m still not seeing how this is different… the only difference I see is that the client library lets a developer use just JavaScript to interact with Facebook rather than relying on a server-side language (e.g. PHP, Python, etc.) to interact with Facebook. This would make it easier for outside sites that rely heavily on Ajax to interact with Facebook, as well as help developers who are only familiar with client-side languages. But I don’t think it’s that big of a change… in fact, I think people have been overlooking the outside API access which has been in place for some time.
What “broader access to Facebook’s core features” does this provide? As far as I can tell, the library only makes API calls… which is exactly what outside web sites have been able to do (via server-side languages) since the API launched. Also, I’m not sure what you mean about leveraging cookies… once again, outside web sites have long been able to request a Facebook login and access data - for an example, see moochspot.com.
January 26th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Hi Nick I’m glad my radar picked up your post.
This will be even bigger than f8 (opening up the facebook app API).
Where can we get more info on the cookie feature?
January 26th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Yeah, this really isn’t that big of a deal since it requires users to be registered on Facebook. Maybe if they had added support for OpenID too.
January 26th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Moochspot is pretty cool example. It even works without having to add Moochspot as an application on FB. Question - doesn’t it violate the FB Storable Information rules that you cannot store relations between IDs? That is, I add my FB friends to my piggybank so the piggybank is essentially storing that friend relationship.
January 26th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
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January 26th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Certainly very interesting…
January 27th, 2008 at 12:12 am
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January 27th, 2008 at 2:48 am
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January 27th, 2008 at 2:57 am
“The second difference is that Facebook has now implemented the ability to leverage cookies to access a user’s data even when they are not at your application.”
Hmmm, I wonder if this will open up similar privacy issues as Beacon did.
January 27th, 2008 at 3:04 am
Yep, I don’t see how this “enables developers to extend their applications to their own websites” any more than the existing API did.
All it is is a method for calling the API from JavaScript without the need to have your secret key embedded in your page.
January 27th, 2008 at 3:10 am
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January 27th, 2008 at 3:36 am
If I understand you Nick than you are telling us that we can now build our own website and allow users to give their facebook id so that we can fetch their information from facebook with new FB library and this can be done with javascript not with server side language like php. Is that what you are trying to say? I m more interested if you give us some sort of live example so we can understand your points in a better way:)
January 27th, 2008 at 3:38 am
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January 27th, 2008 at 9:05 am
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January 28th, 2008 at 2:03 am
Everyone is saying “what’s the advantage here”?. Maybe these people havent experienced the limitations a facebook application developer has within their canvas pages. You have some 400 odd pixels width to work with, and, nested branding.
Ive been elaborating for a week now and specifically just today (before hearing a word about any of this) as to how Facebook is becoming a gaming framework.
http://www.trumptheniche.com/2008/01/27/online-gaming-is-the-value-behind-the-social-web/