Facebook Releases Connect API Privately, Week Before f8

Posted by Nick O'Neill on July 17th, 2008 9:51 AM

Over the past few days Facebook has been reaching out to Silicon Valley insiders to see if they are interested in launching their services with the new Facebook Connect program. The purpose is get a few sample applications ready for when Connect launches next week at f8. From what I hear, Facebook is getting a mixed bag of responses. Some developers have expressed interest while others don’t want to dedicate their resources.

The real question is if developers will be able to pull off great applications by the time f8 rolls around next week. Last year, Facebook released their initial platform to developers a short time before the platform launched with little documentation forcing developers to deal with crashing applications and little communication from Facebook. Developers were still able to pull it off though, as illustrated by iLike who had to deal with a lack of server resources the day after the platform launched.

Will we see a repeat of the chaos again this year? I doubt it. Developers have much greater access to resources this time around but for many, making a significant shift from what they are working on won’t make much sense. An offer from Facebook though is much different than an offer from one of the competing platforms though so expect a number of companies to be ready to launch on Facebook Connect by the time f8 rolls around next week.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 9:51 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Stephen 2 months ago 1 point
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Reading the Developers site it would seem Developers don't have time to attend f8 this year because they're too busy waiting for Facebook to make up their mind about the new profiles. Some developers are so frustrated with Facebook that they aren't even willing to dedicate people to work on converting the current applications to the new profiles because Facebook keeps putting off releasing the new profiles.

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