Facebook is looking for additional ways for its members to communicate and receive updates on the popular social-networking site. Outside developers are being encouraged to create more applications and give users more ways to access the applications.
“No one single company can have a Web site that people are sharing information in and have that be an open system,” said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a recent video post announcing updates and features. “One of the things important to us and going forward is true open standard and operability.”
One new feature for developers is the Facebook Open Stream API, which gives users the ability to interact with their stream anywhere. With the stream — the instant updates of friends’ photos, videos, conversations and comments — developers can access stories published into the stream and display them on a desktop, to a Web site, or on a mobile device.
“As we’ve built out the Facebook platform, openness has always been a theme for us,” said David Morin, senior platform manager at Facebook. “This is all about making one of our core product experiences open to innovate in ways never possible before.”
Now users will not only be able to consume the stream, they will have the ability to publish back into it. “With Open Stream API you will now be able to do this on some of your favorite Web sites such as Plaxo or desktop software such as Seesmic,” Morin said.
Facebook has also created two additional APIs, called stream.get and stream.publish, as well as Facebook Query Language tables allowing developers to directly access the stream.
Using the new APIs, developers can access the stream for a user and then display content in a way that is most relevant for the user, according to the company.
“You can filter, remix or display…