<p>Facebook just announced that they have opened up their activity stream (the stuff coming in and out of all of our walls on the homepage of our personal and public profiles) to developers through a new Open Stream API. What that means for us as business owners is that virtually all Facebook activity can now be recreated, accessed and re-distributed in virtually any third-party program that can be conceived. Third-party developers can now access all the content within news feeds, notes, photos, videos, links, "likes" and comments and any activity from other applications developed previously on the Facebook platform.</p>
<p>This article is meant to say that there are great things coming soon following this announcement. <br /><br />Whenever there is an entire community of developers (not just Facebook) creating new ways for us to interface with all of the other 200,000,000+ Facebook users, that can only result in better, more useful tools for individuals and business owners. <br /><br />This entire community of software developers will now be creating ways that we can better access our fans, understand them, segment them and then better fulfill their needs. It will be easier for us to communicate, easier for us to connect, easier for us to get more details about what they are looking for and thus easier for us to provide value, build relationships and our brands. <br /><br />The actual tools themselves are TBD, but coming soon.<br /><br />A big example of new innovations to come for Facebook is analogous to how a third-party software development company called TweetDeck let's you control your interface with Twitter. They created customizeable channels to help users break down the one main Twitter designed interface that has all followers clumped together in chronological order. This allows users to now get much more value out of Twitter because they can better see and follow what is happening with the people they want to pay attention to most.<br /><br />Here is a direct excerpt from the <a href="http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&amp;story=225">Facebook Developer Blog</a> as it was announced April 27, 2009:<br /><br /><em>“Today we are excited to announce an important step toward greater openness through Facebook Platform. For the first time, we're opening the core Facebook product experience -- the stream -- with the new Facebook Open Stream API. With these new methods, you can access the stream on behalf of a user and then filter, remix, and display the stream back to that user however you choose, wherever you choose, in the manner most relevant for the user experience."<br /></em><br /><strong>Virtually the entire homepage experience can be recreated elsewhere. This means more innovation, more users, more accessibility, more tools, more choices and more opportunity for businesses to use Facebook as a marketing tool. </strong><br /><br />This opportunity will be backed by what is expected to be a slew of hundreds of new applications for Facebook. It can only be speculated that Facebook did this to maintain its dominance, having just recently overtaken MySpace in monthly visits. Where Facebook previously wanted to drive all traffic back to their interface, this now means that more advanced users will never even have to set foot in the Facebook door, but control everything (like a TweetDeck) through a third party application. There will surely be a number of applications that become famous, just like TweetLater, HootSuite, TwitterFeed, Twirl, etc. did with Twitter (each allows you in various ways to access and utilize your Twitter profile and incoming stream of followers, direct messages, searches, etc.).<br /><br />This puts Facebook right up there with Twitter on all the desktop and mobile platforms. But Facebook has something even greater going for it, the depth of interactivity that goes way beyond Twitter’s 140 character micro-blog, and a user base that dwarfs that of Twitter. In January ’09 Facebook had over 11 times the amount of unique visitors as Twitter. This is going to significantly up the ante for the way we all use social media.<br /><br />Just think of the kind of searching, filtering and thus the ability to target and attract fans to your company’s public fan page could be? This is huge. And the other big difference for Facebook is that you can message every last fan when you want. In the Twitter world, you just better hope they are online at the same time, filtering for your message, or just paying really close attention, or your message will get lost in the river of tweets.<br /><br />Today was a good day for any business that wants to practice Practical Social Media!</p>
2009-04-28T01:28:20Z
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facebook-just-changed-all-the-rules-a-giant-step-for-social-media-and-business
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2009-04-28T22:26:31Z
2009-04-28T11:27:23Z
Facebook announces a new Open Stream API, giving third-party developers access to the entire Facebook homepage experience to recreate as they see fit. You won’t believe what this means for marketing your business.
Facebook Just Changed All The Rules, A Giant Step For Social Media and Business
1
2009-05-03T11:07:20Z