Henrik Berggren

parties, information, code & lolcats

The web just got a bit more open

Posted on | April 28, 2009 |

Facebook announcement from Jyri

Facebook openess from Jyri

Yesterday a lot of good stuff happened on the web, especially around Facebook. They first announced that they have opened up stream data to third party developers, data that previously was unavailable. Facebook calls this the Open Stream API and it’s a two-way interface letting developers not only get stream data (with a single request) but also interact with the stream in forms of comments, likes etc. This means that we very soon will see sleek desktop apps like Twhirl, Tweetie and Tweetdeck fully integrated with the Facebook stream enabling conversation with your close non-tweeting friends. There is something intriguing about having your entire social graph right on the desktop. Just like when Adium got Facebook Chat integration, i feel like my mac just became a little more social.

Facebook also released, and open sourced, a desktop prototype for Adobe AIR, try it out.

Next up was the announcement of OpenID support. Facebook will be the first big social network to support OpenID which is a distributed single sign on system. This makes having profiles, logging in and engaging in many different platforms on the web much much easier. Instead of having one set of credentials (ex. username & password) for each site, you can now use your Google information to log in on Facebook. I like OpenID because it makes sign ins, a common procedure that everyone needs, a lot less sucky and safer. Now they just have to fix some usability stuff and people might actually start using it!

I must say that I’m very impressed by Facebook. They keep on pushing new stuff and tweaking their platform while having ~200M users. It’s brave and exactly what we need!

Category: Thoughts
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Comments

2 Responses to “The web just got a bit more open”

  1. Linus G Thiel
    April 28th, 2009 @ 09:52

    Boom! Facebook making power moves! Thank you Hinke for the update.

  2. Angelica
    April 28th, 2009 @ 11:59

    Well, finally! (OpenID)
    I got excited about the idea in 2005 (gasp):
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrpajcAgR1E
    But then again, who wouldn’t be with that presentation? ;-) Granted, we’re not exactly there yet, but we’re getting there…

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