Maybe this makes me sound like some kind of a nazi or a communist bastard promoting some crap, but it’s really not. The truth is, whenever a friend of mine joined facebook and added me as a friend, I’d write on their walls, “Welcome to the Facebook Revolution!” And there is so much truth to that statement.

I already wrote a lengthy post about why the facebook user interface is so much more superior to that of MySpace or Nexopia or any other social community websites. And I also wrote a post about the new Facebook Toolbar for Firefox that I installed. Today, I would like to explore a larger aspect of it - the open source concept using their API that Facebook is promoting with their stuff. For detailed documentations on the Facebook API system, click here.

API stands for Application Programming Interface. There is a Wikipedia description on what API means exactly. API is a concept that is spreading widely to allow the transferrability of web-based applications. Let me make it simple for you. Paypal has an API. With the API, you can implement a paypal checkout system into your own E-Commerce website, allowing your customers to checkout products WITHOUT leaving your website (of course the low-budget solution would be to simply pass them through to Paypal.com). In a nutshell, an API provides a set of functions and access to the database of the mothership website (such as Paypal, Google or Facebook) that can be accessed from external websites or desktop applications so that functionalities revolving around the mothership can be performed at other places.

If I had the time (which I obviously don’t with all my website developing) I could instantly create a website on my own domain at jeffkee.com that can retrieve my friends’ data from Facebook and display it in my own design using my own CSS. I could instantly create a program on my own server that retrieves all my friends from the Vancouver, BC network, or other networks. To test out the Facebook API, check out the test console they have.

Why are APIs important?

The transferrability of functionalities and the extendability by all the developers in the world creates unlimited potential. Think about Firefox. New extensions for Firefox has been one of the greatest backbones of its popularity. There is so much possibilities with this concept, which explains the surge of Firefox users, especially among the more digital-savvy crowd (like me, and I’m assuming you as well, considering you read this far into this article). Using this API, tonnes of developers and coders can create their own facebook-related APIs.

This is something that sets aside Facebook so much from traditional websites. Yes, creating the API environment takes a lot of work. I’ve never been involved in programming an API before (and I honestly don’t want that much headache ever - I’m content going as far as learning how to USE the APIs) but I can imagine the amount of time put in. And my assumption is that the the most important aspect of an API would be the security, and that takes tonnes of time for the careful coding and review. But the time spent on it is worth it.

Facebook has been, in my opinion, perhaps the most revolutionary social community website. The scope of it, the structure, design, usability, the Ajax coding, and the API just blows me away, and I’m a guy who’s been in web development for a fairly long time. If it amazes me, it’s gotta be good!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 at 11:37 am and is filed under Coding, Hot Issues, Marketing and Media, Online Security, Software, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.