Facebook Announces New APIs for Reading and Publishing to the Home Page Stream (Updated)
Facebook today is formally announcing new APIs to enable applications developers to access and publish information in users’ home page streams.
The new Facebook “Open Stream” API includes two new methods: stream.get and stream.publish. With these new methods, developers 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. Other new API methods will allow users to both publish into the stream and to add comments and ‘likes’ to posts in the stream,” Facebook says in a blog post this morning. Details are available in the developer wiki.
Now, Facebook users will now be able to use applications to read and interact with their stream in any application they’ve authorized. Early applications have already been under development using the new functionality, including Seesmic and TweetDeck, which we profiled last month. The entire stream will be available for developers to remix and create new experiences, and we expect to see developers create many more applications that optimize the real-time Facebook experience for different use cases.
However, unlike speculation that made its way around this weekend after an article was published in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is not opening access to all content shared by users to application developers. Rather, these new features are complementary to new APIs Facebook released in February which enabled app developers to access users’ status, links, notes, and videos.
Today’s announcement fits the trajectory of Facebook’s overall strategy in recent months of prioritizing real-time updates, but it isn’t a radical departure from Facebook’s privacy-oriented Platform APIs. Unlike Twitter, where shared information is be default public, on Facebook, shared information is by default private. This means that many applications which the marketing community is clamoring for – like the ability to search and access all updates shared by Facebook users – is not part of this release.
Rather, Facebook is encouraging the developer community to think about new ways of integrating the home page stream experience into their applications. Now that Facebook app developers have easier access to more data, Facebook hopes new real-time apps will dramatically increase content sharing across the Facebook Platform.
April 27th, 2009 at 11:29 am
[...] The new stream APIs that Facebook announced today appear to offer a rich level of data interaction between Facebook, applications, and external sites. So how does it actually work, and how do you go about implementing it? [...]
April 27th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
[...] addition to Facebook’s announcement of new stream APIs this morning, Facebook has also just released the Facebook Desktop for AIR client to demonstrate the new [...]
April 27th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
[...] Facebook’s announcement today of new “Open Stream” functionality, a lot of commentators have misunderstood [...]
April 27th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
[...] morning, Facebook announced the new stream APIs which allow users to access and publish information to the Facebook stream from any website, [...]
April 27th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
[...] seems everyday Facebook takes another page from Twitter’s strategy. Today they opened up the API to allow 3rd party apps to interact with the stream and enabled text message subscriptions in an effort to make sharing of content more [...]
April 28th, 2009 at 1:32 am
[...] of open data pipes (which among other things has resulted in Facebook’s today’s announcement). One of the major factors behind Twitter’s success is its openness. It’d be bad to see this [...]
April 28th, 2009 at 10:17 am
[...] were two sides to the stream APIs that Facebook released yesterday: getting data, which we’ve looked at, and publishing and updating. The latter has the [...]
April 28th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
[...] developers have no doubt heard by now, Facebook unveiled its new Stream API yesterday. Along with the update, Facebook appears to have modified Feed Forms to give advantages [...]
April 29th, 2009 at 6:36 am
[...] to read and interact with their stream in any application they’ve authorized.” said Justin Smith of the Inside Facebook Blog. “The entire stream will be available for developers to remix and [...]
April 29th, 2009 at 11:30 am
[...] Facebook Announces New APIs for Reading and Publishing to the Home Page Stream (Updated) [...]
May 4th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
[...] week, Facebook announced new Stream APIs, enabling developers to integrate the Facebook stream outside Facebook.com. We would expect Facebook to enable real-time stream notifications for developers in the future [...]
May 11th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
[...] Facebook announced the new “Open Stream API” a couple of weeks ago, it made it easy for developers to build applications around the friends timeline in much the same [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
dont know what api,s is all about one i know i cant log in to my homepage nor the log in page on the fbook welcome pg you have 3 sections email-password-and a third block whats it about then the log in block its all in vain what must i do
May 19th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
[...] virtual currency transactions, or other forms of social commerce. However, now that Facebook has opened up the stream API for developers to create new kinds of applications that can run outside any Facebook-operated [...]
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:43 pm
[...] Facebook’s announcement today of new “Open Stream” functionality, a lot of commentators have misunderstood exactly what [...]
June 15th, 2009 at 11:01 am
[...] Facebook opened up the stream API – a way for third party sites and applications to access a user’s activity and publish to the [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:44 pm
[...] couple of months ago, Facebook released the Open Stream API, a new set of Facebook Platform APIs that enable developers to access and publish to the Facebook [...]
August 5th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
[...] the Facebook Open Stream API has proven very successful amongst users of applications like Seesmic and TweetDeck who are [...]
September 9th, 2009 at 10:23 am
[...] to read and interact with their stream in any application they’ve authorized.” said Justin Smith of the Inside Facebook Blog. “The entire stream will be available for developers to remix and [...]
December 18th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
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