The Wall Street Journal is reporting Facebook will open up most if not all of their user-contributed data to developers at a developer event tomorrow. This has been long expected and will likely trigger a wave of third-party integration of Facebook streams with other popular feeds, most notably that of Twitter.
Should players such as Seesmic Desktop and FriendFeed roll out an integrated service, we will be a major step closer to a single stream of realtime events. This in turn will rapidly accelerate a convergence around micromessaging similar to the one around email when it achieved a critical mass following AOL’s opening up of the limited educational and government mail systems to average users.
Already the emotional reaction to the possibility of a swine flu pandemic has pushed Facebook back into the spotlight as people contact their family and friends over the private/public channel. While trying to track down a friend I missed chatting with this weekend at a live performance, someone used Facebook chat to ask what I thought about a Flu Emergency preparation list he’d compiled. Events were moving so fast that he published it before I could respond, but the tools will prove superior to Twitter direct messages, which have been intermittent in recent days according to some reports.
While Twitter has tremendous advantages for newbies, the depth of Facebook and FriendFeed is more and more valuable as we rely on these networks for fail-over instant communications. FriendFeed’s realtime direct messages will likely be duplicated in short order by Facebook, and the opportunity for meshing Facebook and Twitter together will prove irresistible to the hot Twitter client market, what with Tweetie for the Mac synchronizing with its leading iPhone app.
The debate on the network is between Dave WIner, who sees a thousand Twitters, and Jason Calacanis who says Twitter is dialtone. Tomorrow’s announcement suggests something between those two views, with a single aggregated feed managed by two or more of the players in a distributed cross-licensing model. Twitter will continue to own the celebrity growth, but those who look to harness this realtime platform for business and personal networking will quickly adopt the more powerful tools now available at FriendFeed and coming online from Facebook and perhaps Google.
Will this open up sharing/extraction of contacts also or just the events stream?
hopefully they add a lot more data to mess around with.
Opening up ‘user contributed data’ also opens up the potential for exposing limited use (i.e. private) data beyond the constraints that have been set in the Facebook privacy controls.
One can only hope that user controls over the distribution of their own data will be extended as well.
The more they copy, the more they become the same.
the problem i see isn’t that they’re just copying, but that they’re throwing things into their mix without seeming to have any overall game plan for where they’re headed. it seems more like a site that a bunch of college kids threw together than like a site that’s going to make it for the long term. there are other sites where i can see where they’re headed and i can see how they’re new improvements, etc. fit into the over all plan. but when FB adds something, it seems like it knocks everyone off balance because it doesn’t seem to fit with the direction everyone thought they were going in.
@JoshuaFingold, visit phpclasses.org there are a few API’s out there already that allow you to collect such information.
I can understand the impulse that Dave is channeling, every brand wants their own stovepipe. But not every user wants to play at Chinese plate spinning, running from one bamboo stick to another in hopes that the plates won’t slow and fall. I’m weary of checking FB, FF, Twitter, email, RSS readers, YouTube, etc. etc.
If Dave is right and a thousand twitters bloom, Steve is more right, the user’s will want to filter them and have them all show up in one place.
Stovepipes in social media might make sense behind a firewall, inside an organization, but as a consumer of communication, news, and random spewage, I want control of the filter.
“Facebook will open up most if not all of their user-contributed data to developers” — that doesn’t sound like the privacy setting i selected for my content. :-P
yet one more reason why facebook is not the place to be if you have privacy concerns.
Lots of speculation regarding Feeds and Shared Items until tomorrow. It will be hard for FB to put the crown jewels back in the box. A uber-client for Twitter and Facebook combined would relegate FB to a social interface hub rather than a destination.
http://lopezunwired.com
Meh. I don’t think it’s going to do jack.
You know what would happen if Facebook opened up all or significantly more data to developers? You’d get the chance to add significantly more retarded apps to your profile. That’s it. Big deal.
This won’t be any society changing paradigm shift like email was back in the AOL days.
Then again, this IS the same crowd that feels Twitter is a killer web app… There’s only so many ways you can stream vanity.
Additionally, if I need fail-over instant communications, I’ll pick up a damn phone. Not write a Tweet or any other ridiculous, hippie, web 2.0 dopiness.
A more “open” Facebook means more real-time refresh-less updates. Let’s just hope we can make sense and use of it. http://bit.ly/chasingupdates
Hmm, very interesting. I’m definitely intrigued to see what potential this will have. Thanks for the news.
exactly the main feature have a lot of potential.
I dunno how much this benefits the general user who values their privacy.
Most of my friends would be considered general users, eg not using for business and still understand what a phone is.
They don’t give a rats ass about twitter or a lot of these other advances. Everyone I’ve mentioned twitter to thought it was a useless wast of time, which is sad because i think it can be fun.
My point is the majority of users (at least here in New Zealand) don’t care. They just want a platform to procrastinate with and chat now and then. When they hear things like “Facebook will open up most if not all of their user-contributed data to developers” they get scared and may even be driven away.
I bet Chris from Faraday/Data-Portability will be pleased to read this.
Wow, that is most impressive. Well done dude!
RT
http://www.anonymity.es.tc
Facebook has become an embarassment.
DIE ALREADY
Hey Steve & TC … I know you have a steak in Friendfeed … stop promoting it already … better than twitter? huh? where that came from ???
mmm, steak
ummmm… not very impressed, we’ll see how it works.
I treat each social network differently, Facebook I would consider the least exposed with Twitter next followed by Friendfeed which receives the majority – if not all – of my shared content. That said using Facebook Connect I am sharing a lot of activity back the the newsfeed now!
Facebook may be about to drop it’s other shoe but they need to remain true to the user especially in regards to privacy!
Interesting…new enough to all this to not be certain what it means, but I’m already on overload keeping up with all the streams, accounts, what I use them for (business ones, personal ones) …. if the changes make my life easier, great, but it adds more complexity, my brain is going to explode. Seriously.
That’s tomorrow… I will wait to see what happen.
facebook is moving too fast trying to compete with twitter. these sites are already huge targets for hackers and spammers, is security even a priority for facebook? i guess not. i did some research, take a look at justaskgemalto a good digital security resource site, it has some good information on this.
Is anyone ACTUALLY gonna delete their facebook account because of this?
As a developer I would prefer this to authentication, which takes users away from my applications.
facebook paved the way by getting bigger and more evil faster.
dear lord now everyone will know what music and movies I like?
Why would you put any sensitive information on a social website anyway?
I don’t put things on my facebook proflie that I don’t want the world to know. You shouldn’t either.
..but just because there’s an API out there doesn’t mean that all data permissions go out the window. If you don’t want any app to get to your data, don’t add it to your facebook.
Hm. I wonder, practically speaking, what this means for users?
Facebook is not alone. Any user-generated content site knows that content is an asset, both in and of itself as content and also as data to help target advertisers. Any site concerned with the bottom line will exploit user-generated data up to the point they start losing users, and then stop and maximize profits. I think facebook will start losing users as soon as our photos show up in a regular image search, or as soon as other people read our comments on unrelated websites. Then they’ll back off slightly and enjoy greater profits.
Ok, so users will stick around until there’s a serious problem, but what if only a few have them? As soon as users started getting arrested due to incriminating facebook photos, Facebook added better/more obvious privacy controls. That didn’t create a PR nightmare because the average user is smart enough to not post stupid photos, but opening up streams to more public consumption may catch even sensible users off-guard.