
The Facebook Open Stream API - peter123
http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=225
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GraffitiTim
This is a fairly bold and well-timed move by Facebook.

Viewing the stream was the last "feature" that was controlled entirely by
Facebook, and is one of the primary reasons people come back to visit
facebook.com. With this move, Facebook moves away from being a website and
towards being a pure infrastructure/platform play; they own the social graph
and they are the platform for pushing information through it.

I have always thought that Twitter wouldn't stand a chance if Facebook moved
in this direction. Twitter has surprised everyone recently with their growth,
but their survival is now hinged primarily on their great publicity rather
than any fundamental strategic position. A lot of people still perceive them
as a primary force in asymmetric 1-to-many communication, but in fact Facebook
is taking this territory with public profiles and pages. Most Facebook pages
have at least as many followers as their Twitter counterparts, and these pages
can now publish into the stream the same way Twitter can.

Now if only people would build useful stuff on the Facebook platform instead
of a bunch of spammy crap.

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ibsulon
The problem I see is that most useful applications don't want to be tied to
facebook.

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GraffitiTim
I'm assuming you mean tied in the "tied down" sense.

On the one hand there are downsides and risks being tied to a platform, but on
the other hand there are huge opportunities. For applications that are
inherently social or have a strong social component, it's going to be very
valuable or necessary to live on the social graph. Until now, those companies
have had to try to build their own, which is very difficult or impossible.

For now a lot of developers just see Facebook as a way to spread virally,
which has led to a lot of annoying spam machines.

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Tiktaalik
Facebook seems like it's capable of everything that twitter does, and more,
and easier. It's just a matter of making it open and accessible and making it
so that people actually make use of the features. It seems like they're on the
right track. Twitters massive growth has shocked them into fast action.

~~~
mcav
The primary difference is that Facebook's social network remains closed while
Twitter's is open. Twitter's friend system is asymmetric while Facebook's is
symmetric; I don't see how Facebook can really compete with Twitter except in
friend-to-friend, reciprocal streams.

~~~
ivankirigin
Facebook can compete by removing the symmetry. They seem to be moving in that
direction.

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snprbob86
They have added an asymmetric relationship: "fans" rather than "friends". It's
a matter of better surfacing it and making it available for individuals, not
just "Pages"

EDIT: I was right, there is a new "Subscribe to John" link on profiles today.

~~~
ivankirigin
Yeah, I noted the stress on pages too. I didn't know they applied it to
people.

"Fans" has way too much weight to it. "People you follow" and "followers" is
actually a very straightforward description of the relationship on twitter.
Facebook should change their terminology. This is a case of legacy hurting
ideal design. They've had "fans" for some time.

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jdoliner
"We... are happy to be one of the first companies to implement Activity
Streams at scale." What a subtle shot at their competition.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Facebook needs to make sure they don't have trolls doing their marketing,
since basically everything they do is the first time it's been done at that
scale.

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Mistone
for better or worse in many cases fb still acts like a young startup, they try
new things, change stuff and are constantly shipping new features. I love that
they are an independent company. These traits more than anything else is why
they are crushing myspace in the main stream crowd, and staying current with
the early adopters.

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adammarkey
Looks like facebook just upped their ante in it's game to squash twitter.

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axod
I think it's working as well.

It'd be really interesting to see numbers, but I'd bet usage on facebook has
gone up massively since their redesign and new emphasis on the 'stream'.

~~~
dennmart
I would agree that most Facebook users are more active nowadays after the
stream redesign.

It's funny, because when the redesign went live, about 90% of my friends where
bitching about how they 'hated' the new design. Now they're the most active
people on my list.

~~~
boundlessdreamz
That's because they have tweaked the stream design quite a lot after the
redesign. You no longer get multiple entries for every photo your friend has
uploaded etc.

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jdavid
MySpace has had an Open Activity Streams for awhile now. Facebook is just
catching up on the one or two things they were behind on.

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jasonlbaptiste
Until there's a fully public timeline and full search capability like twitter,
this news is mediocre at best.

The problem is, Facebook can probably never do this. Most people have their
profiles quarantined off. If for some reason facebook ever over-rode those
settings and made their stuff public, a true public outcry would occur.

If facebook somehow DOES open full search capability like twitter search/open
public timeline, then wow, we're in for something entirely new. The data there
and possibilities make me feel like a kid in a candy store.

~~~
jonknee
It would be easy enough to add a "make public" checkbox. And instead of just
having add as friend, add a "follow" button. the hard part is getting 200m
users, they already did that. The really part part is making money and well
that's still TBA.

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rythie
This sounds like what we have been waiting for, for long long time from
facebook. I can't wait to get this implemented on my aggregation site,
friendbinder.

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marcusbooster
One of the things I like about the Facebook stream is that it's only viewable
by my friends by default. Does this API take posts outside the Facebook realm?

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bretthoerner
You always have control over that [1], and I think the default is still
friends only.

[1] <http://www.facebook.com/privacy/>

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gfrison
The fb air application doesn't add nothing to the user interaction. It looks
like chrome application I have for fb... I can't distinguish them!

