
Graph API - Facebook Developers - boundlessdreamz
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api
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waxman
It's about time. The FB API was a nightmare. But there's 400 million people on
Facebook, so FB integration is probably good for your site, regardless of was
your site does. The new Open Graph protocol actually looks pretty awesome.
This could be huge.

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OmarIsmail
Agreed. The simplicity and elegance of the API is really great. A lot of sites
have status updates + commenting + liking + feeds... and this essentially
gives you a lot of that functionality for 'free'. You don't need to worry
about the hard problems in regards to friend visibility, scaling the push
model, etc etc. All the difficult data processing is handled on Facebook's end
while a site becomes more of a lens/context/perspective on the data.

Of course the cost of this is that Facebook gets your data. It's a bit of a
Faustian contract (hope I'm using that reference properly). They'll save you
engineering cycles and promote your content to your user's social graphs, you
just have to give them your data.

Sites really now have 3 options: 1) Ignore FB to their own risk 2) Embrace FB
and give up control of their data 3) Use FB as a data mirroring and
distribution mechanism - but still give them all your data.

Choice 1 is a difficult decision to make... if FB becomes THE standard and
you're not providing your users the experience they expect, maybe they'll go
somewhere else. Of course this could be like Beacon where users hate it. Or it
could be like Facebook Connect where it's cool and some sites leverage it
really well, but hasn't change the landscape of the web THAT much.

If you choose Option 3 you're still giving your data to Facebook. So now
you're left with, is it worth the engineering cycles to ensure you don't get
locked out of your own data. I think most people on here will say yes, but a
surprising number might not.

Now after thinking about it for a while, this will cause an uptick in Facebook
Connect usage and integration, but I don't think it's going to fundamentally
change the way sites are designed. Maybe in a year or two if Facebook
continues its growth current trajectory.

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Nervetattoo
I doubt I would design a site differently, but I sure as hell would make sure
I connected to the "open graph". Its simply to big a win, it can't be ignored
unless your a big enough player.

And may i restate: The API is slick and sexy and feels damn open.

The only downside here is that its a company like facebook that ends up as the
biggest winner. But should you as a minor site really give a damn? I mean, its
unlikely that facebook is in competition with you anyway so its not like you
actually lose anything by giving them data.

And isn't this really a step in the direction the entire web have been crying
out for a long time? No more data duplication, "let me put my info one place
and then pluck it from there". I consider todays f8 to be quite major for web
developers like myself and obviously for facebook as this means they are
actually heading towards their goal from some time ago; Becoming a platform.

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nl
This API tastes so much like the old FriendFeed APIs. Compare
<http://friendfeed.com/api/documentation> and the Facebook API's and you'd
swear that it's just v3 of the FriendFeed API.

(This is a good thing, btw. I guess there is now doubt that Facebook got good
value out of that purchase)

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michaelfairley
Makes sense, considering Facebook bought FriendFeed not too long ago. This is
probably the first of many benefits they got from that acquisition.

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tcdent
The big thing to me is the addition of a search method. If I understand it all
correctly (I did miss the first part of the f8 keynote) we've got the
permission to pull any data out by keyword for the very first time.

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enki
this could turn into a generic graph API eventually, even though right now
it's just an API refactor.

also looks like bret taylor's been working on this - guess the friendfeed
acquisition worked well for facebook.

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mikebo
Coming next: social network aware adsense.

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NEPatriot
Mix in community with adsense and you get: looking for gadget XYZ? Here are
the ads for it, by the way X of your FB friends bought product 1, 4X of your
FB friends bought product 2. Which are you more likely to buy?

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joelhaus
Is there a reason they chose not to use rdf/microformats? This is their
proprietary FBML markup, I believe.

Seems a little redundant, but maybe I missed something.

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nl
_Is there a reason they chose not to use rdf/microformats?_

Because RDF sucks? And microformats only help in some cases

 _This is their proprietary FBML markup, I believe_

It looks a lot like JSON to me. What are you looking at?

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joelhaus
Is this a widely held view? I'd like to understand the logic, so a reference
would be appreciated.

If a suitable standard exists, you would think they'd take advantage of it
(increased adoption), no? I also don't like the idea of duplicating efforts,
but apparently I have missed some technical limitation.

[Edit] I think I just found the part of the answer:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1283507>.

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inigo
Yes, lots of people who like RDF dislike the RDF/XML serialization of it. It's
ridiculously verbose, hard to process with XML tools, not very human-readable,
and there can be many equally valid RDF/XML serializations for any given RDF
graph.

N3 is much more widely liked - <http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Primer> \- as
is RDFa - <http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/>

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joelhaus
This is why it's always good to hang around people smarter than you are.
Thanks for all of the great replies.

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theli0nheart
Page is currently down for me.

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code_duck
Page requires login for no apparent reason. I HATE however accessing
essentially anything at all on Facebook requires one to sign in first.

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liuliu
The example shows in the doc use your OWN Facebook username. I guess that is
why.

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cilantro
I love the irony that you have to log in to read the docs.

