I nearly re-upped my subscription to the online version of the WSJ this evening, so as to read this piece: Facebook Opens Site To Developers Of Services.
But I found the text here – also on the WSJ site. Genie’s outta the bottle. From it:
The announcement, expected Monday, means developers can build services that access the photos, videos, notes and comments users upload to Facebook, with users’ permission. That’s a big change for the social-networking site, which has exercised tight control over the look and feel of its service and how developers can interact with it.
What I cannot figure out is whether this means Facebook is going to solve its linking problem. I’ve complained about it before, but the big issue with Facebook, to my mind, is that it does not play well with others when it comes to linking on the open web. In fact, it’s damn hard to even link *inside* Facebook, never mind sending links *from* other services (IE Twitter) into your Facebook status feed (you can’t).
If Facebook fixes this, it’s a game changer. If folks can create a useful service that acts and looks like Twitter, and works both inside and outside Facebook, and if these kinds of services can make money on their own terms (and not be subject to the whims of Facebook’s current TOS, which are terrifying), well, that’s a very big deal.