New Facebook API Will Change Everything
April 27th, 2009Posted by: esmith Posted in Twitter, Web 2.0
This is going to get messy.
Tomorrow, Facebook will radically shift its gatekeeping policies and allow for Twitter-like access to its data stream. The immediate effects: Facebook support in Twitter apps, a social networking giant declaring the need for connectivity, and a flood of Facebook apps, remixes, mashups, thawed and reheated in the morning.
The huge implications for Twitter aside, it’s also a significant step towards real-time interconnectivity. What’s in the right now — the derivative — definitely seems to be the way things are progressing. A good indicator could be the largest player in social networking blatantly declaring through action, “I will give you all of my data. Right now.”
I am quite sure that other services and networks will morph towards this trend (many already have), and soon the different “genres” of services will all congeal into desktop or mobile based mega apps, supporting dozens of communications services, from e-mail to messaging to Facebook to the next big thing. You can quote me on that. It’s coming.
This is of course a logical move for Facebook, and analysts have seen it coming — avoid the costs of developing various interfaces, but still grow out the user base garnered by third-party developers.
Will Facebook be able to get past its reputation as a more personal experience and dip into Twitter’s celebrity, news, debate, and networking share of the market? Nobody can say for sure, but I suspect it has more than a fighting chance to become a huge participant. Considering the figures for Facebook’s growth demographics, Zuckerberg and his associates have surveyed a nice set of trends by which to gauge their investment.
Over the coming weeks, more details and trends will materialize and the races will commence — I’ve already got my tickets.
May 5th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
With the UK confirming two cases of swine flu and the World Health Organization raising its alert level from three to four, the threat does sound quite serious.