Facebook have just launched and announced that they are now making available their "live stream" in an API (which is basically the realtime feed that they have recently introduced in the latest re-design which caused all the flurry online) to developers to build third party applications. This is what Twitter have been doing for a longtime now, hence the mass proliferation of third party applications built out on top of the Twitter API. There was a Facebook presentation yesterday where third party application developers such as seesmic who have recently released the seesmic desktop which will replace thwirl which brings together facebook and twitter updates. Also there was Adobe, who talked about their recent agreement to collaborate with Facebook using AIR as a development platform. We can now expect over the coming months a bevvy of applications and mash ups that take data out of the stream and present and reconsitutue it in some creative ways. That said there's already some controversy over the developer terms and conditions about some restrictions being imposed by Facebook.

social networking