Facebook Apps Can Now Be Hosted Outside Facebook

29th January 2008

In what is clearly a very smart move, Facebook has leapt ahead of its competitors by announcing a new JavaScript client library that will allow Facebook apps to run on all websites. Application providers can now create applications that will run within Facebook and can also be added by webmasters onto regular HTML websites.

Facebook’s JavaScript client library will facilitate applications to make Facebook API calls from any website and also create AJAX Facebook applications from any website. According to Wei Zhu of Facebook, the client library does not require any server-side code, turning Facebook into an application host.
This is great news for application providers, who can now see popular Facebook apps become available to the wider Internet population via other websites. Webmasters will benefit from the ability to include cool / popular widgets on their websites to draw more visitors and improve current visitor stickiness.

Facebook will benefit most of all, as developers will prefer their platform and user interest in the network could also rise as a result of the added visibility they obtain.
Any application using this library would need to load in an iframe, irrespective of whether it was through Facebook or through the user’s own website. This is likely intended to preserve the application structure. Almost all Facebook APIs will be supported except for photo upload.

Nick O’Neill at AllFacebook says that it will now possible for developers and webmasters to build their own gaming platform, that resides on their own website but leverages the power of users’ Facebook relationships. In the past applications have leveraged the Facebook API, but now there is broader access to Facebook’s core features and developers will be able to use cookies to access user data even when the users are not using that specific application.

Loomia SeenThis Facebook App According to Nick, “Facebook has publicly released something with the intent of extending their platform”, and that is big news as it clearly signals Facebook’s intention to become the driving force behind all social aspects of the Internet, and compete with Google, the ’search backbone’ of the Internet.

Technical specs of Facebook JavaScript Client Library

Loomia App Available On Wall Street Journal Online

Start up company Loomia have already released one such app, called SeenThis on the Web outside Facebook. The Wall Street Journal Online announced today that they will use SeenThis to bring users’ social networks onto the pages of WSJ.com. WSJ.com users will now see what WSJ.com articles are most popular with their friends and groups from leading social networking sites, without having to leave the site. CNet and NBC have also signed up to use the Loomia service on their websites.

Tags: facebook, javascript, social media, social-network, website

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AJAX coding school » Blog Archive » AJAX Code [2008-01-31 11:14:12] : 31 January 2008 at 11:27 am

[...] Facebook Apps Can Now Be Hosted Outside Facebook AccuraCast – London,England,UK Facebook’s JavaScript client library will facilitate applications to make Facebook API calls from any website and also create AJAX Facebook applications [...]
Facebook Apps All Over The Web : 31 January 2008 at 2:14 pm

[...] Thanks to AccuraCast I found that Facebook released JavaScript client library which allows Facebook developers to create applications which will work from any website. Should we think that this is next big step of Facebook expansion? I don’t know, but if I remember correctly developers had possibility to embed apps into websites before this release also, but with this JavaScript client library it is much more easy to do and, what is important, it does not require any server side coding. [...]

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