
Q: Is it better to use Facebook's developer toolkit, or roll your own? - npk

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schoudha
If your speaking about Facebook's API then that the decision on whether to use
it is highly dependent on the purpose of your site. Personally, I would think
very carefully before branding your site as a Facebook addon.

You might be referring to Thrift. In that case, it's only useful if you want
to do cross-language services. I don't think an early-stage startup needs this
sort of architecture but I guess designing for scale never hurts.

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npk
The power of the internet today is the social component. It seems silly to
spend resources reinventing the wheel. Does it make sense to use Facebook's
developer toolkit?

1) Should you worry that you're relying on the infrastructure of another
company? Will VCs worry about your long term prospects?

2) Would it be ok to use the developer toolkit until your business is a
success, and then switch to your own code?

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dfranke
Mu.

What are you trying to write, and how well does it overlap with the toolkit's
intended purpose? Put another way, if you wrote your own, how different would
it be?

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drewp
There would be almost nothing in common with your non-FB "toolkit" and the FB
one. Theirs is a way to access the FB database, yours wouldn't be.

Hopefully you're not imagining that FB for some reason decided to give away
the tools that would be needed to create another FB. That's not what they mean
by "toolkit".

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zkinion
Better yet, just simply tell us what you're trying to do...

Also, they're coming out with a bunch of new stuff towards the middle of may.

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npk
I'd love to tell you what I'm trying to do: But I'm not really sure yet.

Clearly, it's hard to ask for advice on an issue that's not fully fleshed out.

It's just that so many webapps today need to have user authentication/profile
management, it seems a shame to have to build your own for two reasons: 1)
You're wasting your time building something. 2) People trust you with their
personal information, I think people are more willing to trust, say, a
facebook, then they are joestartup.com. I say this based on my intuition.

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zkinion
Why don't you "flesh" it out here? Maybe it'll help solidify your idea in your
mind, or more than likely, evolve it.

Just throw it out there, even if it sounds stupid in your own mind.

