Facebook + External Apps
Do you use Facebook ? Do you have a Facebook account? I can’t believe you are not on Facebook!!! That’s probably what you will hear when Facebook evangelists approaches you, and they are in the tens of millions. You can find them everywhere, from college kids all the way to mature-age users.
Facebook, in all its glory, has gained a lot of fame recently. It’s so famous it even prompted local media (Australian) to scrutnize it for wasting money on big businesses. On the other hand, there are touching stories of long lost relatives who got reconnected via the same application. Regardless of what it does, Facebook is connecting a lot of people online and its usage prompt a serious question to all Web 2.0 developers/entrepreneurs out there : Should I give the userbase in Facebook a miss ?
The answer is : NO. As a Web 2.0 developer/entrepreneur, the idea of tying up an application to a large userbase in Facebook is very enticing. Facebook essentially acts as a “Hook” between your custom written web application with the huge database in Facebook. The two different composition of a Facebook application (The Profile part, which looks like a widget) and also the main application (when you click on the Profile link or the name of the application on the menu). So essentially you can display a no-frills version of the information in the little widget at the front.
The crux of a social collaborative application is managing human relationships. Fortunately, this is all catered for in the Facebook API, so this takes the plumbing of this complex task out of hand!!!
Let there be no doubt that Facebook is there to stay. That’s why this developer has teamed up with another geek friend of his to experiment a Facebook application before getting cast-away in the Web 2.0 community. Let’s hope it will turn out well and cool.
Afterall, Facebook represents the core about social collaboration, something which I passionately believe in that brings value to every hierarchy in the society.
Stay tune for the Facebook application!
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