I like the sound of it. I have been selling virtues of open source strategy for some time and I know it works.
Facebook will have a convincing claim for leadership in emerging internet operating system if they let other developers run with significant chunk of social networking shell. Shell which hosts all social graph processing. Allow other developers to enhance and implement. This maybe a move to counter Open Social but indirectly it can affect Ning.
Facebook is primarily a database repository. For database company to go open source means what gets distributed will be marginal. This codebase cannot threaten core offering, which is all about enriching and protecting social graph (Scoble is always right!). Which means APIs for read and write can go totally open source but actual data repository will be hard to release. Privacy issues will be real.
If I allow conspiracy theory to run for a while then I see a nice complement to Microsoft's cloud computing initiatives. Also possibilities for tight desktop strategy with WPF/Silverlight APIs linked in. Mother and satellite node picture always gets product managers drooling and I can definitely sense similar temptation here.
With enough user base and third party apps in Facebook.com, they seems to be just ready to pursue bigger architecture ambition.
[Pic thanks to Gapingvoid]
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Charlie Cheever from Facebook has hurled first real bomb in closely observed attempts by social networking platforms to "open up". Data portability promise got first reality check of ToS violation.
Facebook spent couple of days brainstorming on Google's "grand design" and came to conclusion that it's better to block them right away. So no Google FriendConnect for Facebook developers.
In the past, when we found applications passing user data to another party (for instance, to ad networks for the purpose of targeting), we suspended those applications and worked with those developers to ensure they respect user privacy. Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology. We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance. We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.
This is NOT a good news for Facebook developers as well as for other vendors who have interest in cross network applications.
I have been following recent announcements in this context. Very soon all these major platforms need to stop and think about how Twitter platform has emerged right under their nose and enabling next generation applications (For example - TwisterNow, Summize, and MessageDance) . It's time for these platform vendors to read Twitter tea leaves (or tweets! ). That's where we are going to see truly open platform in action.
After Myspace Data Availability and Facebook Connect, Google Announces FriendConnect.
Facebook Connect: Data portability done right
Myspace’s Data Availability - The walls are coming down
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