First of all: if you read the headline, calm down.

As loyal readers will remember, I previously posted here that it might be possible to bypass the politics playing out between Facebook and Google by building a Facebook app acting as a container for OpenSocial gadgets. We now have a working version of the OpenSocket application, demonstrating some basic OpenSocial gadgets running inside Facebook!

The irony that Facebook can (sort of) support OpenSocial before MySpace does not escape me. It’s not really fair on MySpace to say that, though; I signed up to OpenSocial before they did! In many ways, we’re strengthening Facebook’s position: demonstrating OpenSocial on their platform means they can rightly claim their platform was ‘open’ - or at least flexible - in the first place.

Our container has rudimentary support for all of the OpenSocial functionality that can be found in Ning and Hi5’s current sandboxes. The plan is to release the code as open source to enable developers to wrap their own gadgets as Facebook apps. While that will never be as satisfactory as writing a native Facebook version of a gadget, it would be a quick way to port it to Facebook while full development is underway. More likely, the project will allow interested developers to study the differences between the two platforms.

To protect the Facebook platform from any OpenSocial diseases, the demonstration application only allows use of approved gadgets hosted on our OpenSocket web site. If you are interested in seeing your gadget within Facebook, you can send it to us and we will check it for ‘unscrupulousness’ before hosting it.

So what would Google make of this stunt? It demonstrates the potential ubiquity of their new standard. As a beta-release, OpenSocial has some promising aspects; I will write a follow-up post describing my experiences with the platform - which have stoked some concerns about the leadership Google needs to show if it is to consolidate into a usable standard.

Aside from being a curiosity right now, I hope we can expand the OpenSocket project to develop more open source libraries for social network developers; there is a lot of code being repeatedly reinvented by many developers that could be shared and augmented for the benefit of all, and not to the erosion of any competitive advantage.

I agree with Lee Lorenzen’s assessment that a project porting the many Facebook applications to OpenSocial would have more value than our OpenSocket work so far. For the time being though, the direction I have chosen is “funnier” - not to mention, easier… Perhaps his suggestion is something we can look into next. If you are interested in joining in, please see our main site!

[Dan Lester is a professional holidaymaker and an amateur social network consultant. He developed OpenSocket with the invaluable help of his new friend Ignacio Blanco.]

Last night, Facebook announced that they are now offering test accounts for developers. This was a serious problem for a lot of developers wishing to test out their application. Developers were forced to create false accounts resulting in possible suspension of those accounts. It appears as though Facebook understands your pain developers! Creating a test account is simple:

• Make sure you have installed the developers application
• Login under the account that you don’t plan on using for real
• Go to the following url: http://www.facebook.com/developers/become_test_account.php
• Your account has been registered as a test account!

One thing to note is that test accounts are not visible to real accounts and vice versa. Also, you can make a test account from an existing account but all of your friends will disappear. If you want to read more information about the new update, go check out the Test Accounts wiki page.

Over the past few months, Facebook has witnessed a growing base of dedicated platform developers. Launching hundreds of applications a day, these developers are hoping to grab a piece of the extremely valuable Facebook real estate. Except for the Linux and Microsoft operating systems, I have never seen such a dedicated base of developers. These developers are working night and day to launch what they hope to be the next popular application on Facebook. There’s one thing that Facebook gets to enjoy currently: no competition.

Facebook is not simply a social network, they are a social platform and currently there is nobody in the space. Facebook will have a whopping 6 month lead on all competitors (at a minimum) and that lead may continue to grow. What will happen when the new platforms launch though? Are the 120,000 developers (120,000 have added the developer application but the majority have not built an app) that are currently on Facebook going to go to another platform? Definitely!

Facebook has been working hard to help build a developer community through their Facebook Developer Garages (as I posted about yesterday) and through the developer forum. I would guess that we are going to see a significant slowdown in the growth of new applications once MySpace and competing platforms launch. Those developers that have built significant properties on Facebook will continue to be dedicated to Facebook but they are also going to try to expand outside of Facebook. The developers that have not built a significant presence due to the increasing barrier to success are going to go elsewhere and potentially not look back.

So what does Facebook need to do? Well there are a number of things (some of which I will be covering in the next couple days), but the primary thing is to continue providing significant incentives to developers. As the likelihood of building a large user base on Facebook (without investing in marketing) decreases, Facebook is going to need to provide new services and offerings for developers. Any suggestions about what those should be?

I just found out a new project that Dave Cohen of San Francisco is working on that is pretty sweet! Earlier this month I posted about a content management system on Facebook. Within weeks it looks Dave has successfully ported over Drupal into Facebook. While Dave is not complete with the project (view screen shots below), he is coming along nicely. He has successfully ported the website, “Drupal for Facebook” into the Drupal for Facebook application.

When this is complete, it is going to suddenly become much easier to develop robust communities on the Facebook platform. I have sent a message to Dave to find out if this is an open project or if it is just his and is friends. While I haven’t heard back yet, I will be sure to post a follow-up for any developers that want to participate in the project. Alternatively, you can simply post a comment below if you would like to contribute. It will be interesting so see how far along this goes in the coming weeks. Being a developer myself, I can speak from experience when I say this is surely a challenging task. Best of luck to Dave in completing the project! We will be excited to see the final app.

Drupal for Facebook About Page

Drupal for Facebook Forum

Last night Facebook announced a new stats page for developers. The new statistics are nothing to brag about. The only additional information that is being displayed is the total number of adds, removes, blocks and unblocks from the previous day. Additionally you can view the status returns of each page request. All of these things are statistics that developers should be tracking internally anyways.

While the new statistics are extremely limited, it does show Facebook’s intention to eventually display more detailed statistics. What would be nice to see is some sort of advanced analytics that displays demographic information for each page being viewed. I’ve been hearing that Facebook is going to release an analytics package around the same time that they launch their new advertising platform. Analytics are going to be critical to the success of their advertising platform. Google has been successful with detailed analytics. It is now time for Facebook to show that they can provide more detailed analytics based on detailed demographic information, especially if they are going to be considered a 10 or 15 billion dollar company.

If you ever questioned Facebook’s dedication to its developer base, this should lower your concerns a little. Facebook has launched a public bug tracking system. While not a huge development undertaking, given that they leveraged the Bugzilla bug tracking system, all complaints were previously being emailed and posted in the developer forum. Want to track the status of your bug? Simply log in to bugzilla.

This is going to make it much easier for Facebook to track all the issues they are having with the platform. One thing that I wonder about the new bug tracking system is whether or not the system should be used to file complaits about applications being shut down (as Jason Beckerman previously experience) and similar complaints which aren’t necessarily development oriented. One thing is for sure: Facebook is dedicated to developers that are building applications on their platform.

The better the relationship between Facebook and the developers, the better relationships will be between developers and clients. Now the only step left for Facebook is to launch some sort of general support inquiry line. I would imagine Facebook will eventually have a call center in India answering all responses, especially if they end up raising another $500 million.

For those developers that were having troubles building new applications because they had so many in development as well as in production, worry no longer. Last night, Facebook updated the maximum number of API keys per developer from 10 to 100. This will surely make room for those that have an overload of applications! The only downside to this is that those that are looking to poach Facebook URLs will now have a higher limit.

Perhaps that’s why they discreetly posted about it as a platform status update rather than on their blog or in their developer news. Whatever their rationale, this will definitely make life easier for many of us. Facebook is truly showing their dedication to making the developers happier.

The FBJS tag which had been in beta for the past month or so in now live. All Facebook applications can now utilize Javascript. Facebook also has a built in AJAX object that enables developers to build all the AJAXy goodness into their applications that they’d like. The one pitfall is that you can’t use javascript includes. While easy to workaround, it is one difference from standard web page.

Slowly but surely, Facebook is providing developers with limitless capabilities through building out their feature set. Any competing platform is going to have to go through the same evolution which means that Facebook is going to maintain their position as the platform leader for the foreseeable future.

This morning when I walked into my office I stopped to chat with the developer who is creating our application. We discussed some of the features we were working on and also something that has been the primary issue with developing on the platform: a lack of documentation. The existing documentation for the platform is sufficient for developing applications but that is about as far as it goes. Additionally, there is much discussion on the developer forums but many people don’t seem to have answers. The only conclusion I come up with is that those developers that figure out how to make something work on the platform have little incentive to share that information with other developers. While the Facebook development platform is nowhere near open-source, it does have a massive community of developers that can help to support each other.

Why then are they not helping as much as they often do in an open-source environment? The only conclusion that I can draw is the monetary incentive of developing a successful application. If a developer can protect their information for as long as possible, it provides a competitive advantage. Maybe I’m wrong on this though since I’m not highly active in the developer forums. Additionally, Facebook has opted to provide the bare minimum amount of information when describing their API. All I can say is that they are not making it easy for application developers as they constantly update the API. Perhaps this is simply the downfall of developing on an everchanging platform.