Look for a brand new crop of Facebook applications to spring up; the company recently announced some new API methods that will allow outside developers to access previously off-limits data, like your status updates, links and notes.
The new API tools see Facebook knocking a few welcome holes in its “walled garden” approach to the web, but don’t think Facebook is going to let anyone pull out your data and use it how they like. As always, protecting user privacy trumps everything else in the Facebook ecosystem.
As an example, the Facebook developer blog talks about how a travel app could use the new tools to allow its users to create and share notes on Facebook. The app could import text, pictures, and even videos — collect that data under a single application tab and you have a community travel network.
In other words, the real growth from the new API tools will be in pushing data into Facebook, not offering new ways to pull it out.
Some have suggested that that new API tools are Facebook’s bid to take on Twitter, but that logic misses the point entirely. If Twitter is the world shouting out 140 character conversations, Facebook remains a private dinner party.
The new API methods merely add some new things to the private party menu — namely status updates, links and notes. If Facebook’s private party is emulating anything it’s FriendFeed — the new API tools open up a way to add more topics to the conversation, not a way to move the conversation out in the open.
While it certainly seems like Facebook would like to see a mashup and application ecosystem — like Twitter has spawned — develop around its own platform, the site is also hamstrung by its beginnings as a very private place to share information with friends.
Unlike Twitter or Flickr — which both grew, at least in part, as a result of their open APIs, allowing developers mashup and re-purpose data in ways far beyond the original design — Facebook has grown as a closed service that jealously safeguards its users’ data and privacy.
I spoke with Dave Morin and Mike Vernal, the lead developers behind Facebook Connect, earlier this month, asking both where Facebook Connect was headed and whether or not the site will ever really open up.
While Morin and Vernal made it clear that Facebook wants be part of the open web, nearly every question I asked circled back around to the common theme — how can Facebook open up, yet still keep user data protected?
Announcement’s like today’s new API tools are a welcome step toward an open Facebook, but ultimately it seems almost impossible to have it both ways (private and open).
Facebook might want to be a source of popular mashups and support an entire ecosystem of apps like Twitter, but the main reason those ecosystems exist is because all the data on the site is available to mashup/application developers.
How interesting would a Twitter meme tracker be if it only tracked 5 percent of Twitter users? Given Facebook’s API limitations, that’s about the best statistical sampling a Facebook app can hope for.
In order to protect user data Facebook applications can only access data from users that have agreed to let the application do so. Even the most wildly popular applications can only claim about 15 percent of Facebook users are participating — hardly a compelling data source when there’s Twitter or other services available that offer full access to all data.
Is Facebook wrong to protect its users data? Of course not. That’s where much of its value lies — people trust Facebook with sensitive information. But the downside to that is that Facebook can never be Twitter, nor can it be Flickr, or any other truly open site.
But of course that doesn’t mean that Facebook can’t carve its own niche. The real value of the new API tools lies not in pulling data out of Facebook, but pushing it in. Does that mean your links and notes will disappear behind the Facebook walls? Yes, but if the links are pulled from Delicious and the notes from FriendFeed (for example) then the content is already on the open web.
With more data coming in there will be additional stuff to explore within Facebook — potentially the biggest winners are groups and communities both within Facebook and those that are starting to form around Facebook Connect.
Expect tools like news aggregators, community link pools and perhaps Digg-like link suggestion and rating applications to pop up in the wake of the new developer tools.
