Facebook: The Google of social networking websites? Options

[*mipadi*]

Part of my workday always includes killing time with Facebook during the slow periods. Today when I logged in, though, I was in for a treat. No, I didn't have a new friend request or a message; rather, there was an announcement that Facebook had opened up a way for developers of other applications to integrate with Facebook.

In laymen's terms, this means anyone can create a website or desktop application that can utilize Facebook's rich tapesty of information in some way. Maybe it's just the nerd in me talking, but I thought this was pretty remarkable. Facebook is already an extremely well-designed web application with many interesting features. I've long been fascinated with how easily, but powerfully, it ties seemingly random and unrelated bits of data together to draw trends or create social "maps" or "webs". It seems this ability is only going to grow with the introduction of third-party applications to do interesting things with that data.

In a way, it reminds me of Google's ability to tie vast amounts of data together into a usable and powerful application. And think of the possibilities if some of Google's applications, such as Google maps, was tied into Facebook's info...

Anyway, for those interested, more information can be found on Facebook's developers' page.