Själv har jag tidigare bloggat om Omeka - ett fritt tillgänlgigt verktyg för för att skapa webbplattformar. Jag har hittat lite biblioteksapplikationer för Facebook och konstaterat att utan API för kataloger så blir det inget kul.
Det som stör mig lite är att det inte finns någon i Sverige som verkar bry sig, utom några enstaka entusiaster. Förra året sökte Länsbiblioteket i Örebro ett regional utvecklingsbidrag från kulturrådet för en förstudie om hur biblioteken bäst använder applikationer för t ex kataloger, frågetjänster, digitala läsecirklar etc, för plattformar på webben som t ex Facebook, Ning och NetVibes.  Förstudien skulle testa och validera befintliga verktyg som exempelvis LibGuides och Facebook Developers.
Vi fick avslag på ansökan med motiveringen att "liknande, ej utvärderade projekt pågår".
Det är OK för mig, men jag väntar fortfatande på kunskapsspridningen från det projektet.

Jag har en känsla av att det har plöjts ner för mycket pengar och tid på oflexibla webb 1.0-lösningar. Ta tex den stora satsningen på VRL+ som staten ville att vi länsbibliotek skulle engagera oss i för att driva Fråga biblioteket. Ungefär samma saker man kan göra i dyr VRL+miljö är gratis tillgängliga i chattprogram som t ex Meebo. Oregon State University Library har tagit fram en open source-tjänst som heter LibraryFind - som påminner starkt om ambitionerna som gänget kring Bibliotek24 har. B24-projektet ska/skulle ha presentera/t sin lösning på Bok & Biblioteksmässan i Göteborg till hösten.  Och med tanke på diskussioner om Oracle-licenser och ej utelämnade API:er, vilka bibliotek har möjlighet att ens testa t ex  open source bibliotekssystemet Koha - demo här.
För att inte tala om Drupal.

Och jag tänker: WTF!
Varför har inte vi en svensk motsvarighet till MIT Librarie's Betas, Penn Labs eller MLibrary Labs? (Hela listan finns här)

Mer att läsa: Inside Higher Ed: OpenMinds, Open Books, Open Source

Och svaret är: Nätverket för öppen källkod

One of the problems Google App Engine can solve is the scaling of Social Networking App's on OpenSocial and Facebook App's.

The time for the so called "geeks" of the Internet world to simply play around with it and build things for fun has ended. The time for the entrepreneur has begun. As with any environment where large amounts of people gather, weather it be physically or virtually, there becomes an opportunity for entrepreneur to make money.

 Many entrepreneurs are searching for that killer idea that will cause 1000`s of people to install it and as a result earn some money from it.  Its been an interesting marketing decision for facebook to allow application developers to display adverts within them and keep all of the money generated from them. This has meant that application developers can focus on making there application as enjoyable and useful as possible to the facebook user and not need to actually sell anything to them to earn money.

 There have been a number of Internet advertising companies set up that will work with the application owner to deliver the adverts on their application. But there is no real reason to go with them, i have seen both Google Adsense and Yahoo adverts on applications, both of which are well known for paying very well on a Pay Per Click basis.

 One thing you may be thinking is, I have got a great idea, but i have not got a clue about how to build it!!!

 Well this is really not a problem, just like designers of websites, there are loads of people that are willing to build you application for you. In fact you may well be able to get it built for very little cost, due to 2 main reasons:

The first is that facebook is used and made up with a massive number of students, who are experienced in using facebook, so know how it works. Also students that do freelance website developments on the side will charge a lot less then a company for the work.

The second is that a lot of the students live in the USA, and as a result would charge you in dollars for the work. With the exchange rate as it is at the moment, someone in the UK who wanted an application built could get one done for around half the price of a UK student doing it by outsourcing it to a US developer.

So the time has officially come, to all you entrepreneurs out there, what idea for an application can you think of that facebook users will not be able to live without and as a result make you your first Million????

The fact is people only want to use those lame little social/game apps on facebook. They're the most popular and they'll continue to be the most popular. People talk about more useful apps. They're already there its just no one is using them.

There are ways of monetizing those uber popular stupid little apps - maybe a few million here or there is to be made - but there's not ways of making mega money out of them.

These types of apps will be popular on the OpenSocial platform too. For the app builders on facebook who have made money OpenSocial is like a gold mine to tempting to ignore. The combined user base is 4 times bigger than Facebooks and people on sites like Myspace I think are even more inclined to use those lame apps.

Mark Cuban says its too late for OpenSocial to come to the party. But I think its not to late for Facebook to completely tank with their contemptuous attitude towards their user base privacy and their new ad platforms. In a years time after Crash 2.0 I can see Mark Zuckerberg curled up in a fetal position crying - "why didn't I take the $2 billion".

The best way to use these app platforms is to set up blogging and forum clients and get facebook/myspace users etc to create content for your own websites.

User data mobility will never happen within one of the major social networks. They just wouldn't allow it.

It's a form of web app syndication or WAS. Google has managed to attract some key facebook companies like Slide. The OpenSocial platform is like one ring to bind them all.

The combined number users of the initial OpenSocial partners is twice that of Facebook. Since it is an open platform it could easily send the exclusive facebook api to the platform graveyard. Facebook will probably end up jumping on the OpenSocial bandwagon is my guess. Get access to 100 million users. They can use your apps, build your content, and your community.

Not the end of Facebook though because Facebook still has 50 million users. Facebook + OpenSocial = 150 million users.

Ning

This is the exact same concept as the Facebook platform, with two huge differences:

• With the Facebook platform, only Facebook itself can be a "container" -- "apps" can only run within Facebook itself. In contrast, with Open Social, any social network can be an Open Social container and allow Open Social apps to run within it.
• With the Facebook platform, app developers build to Facebook-proprietary languages and APIs such as FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and FQL (Facebook Query Language) -- those languages and APIs don't work anywhere other than Facebook -- and then the apps can only run within Facebook. In contrast, with Open Social, app developers can build to standard HTML and Javascript, and their apps can then run in any Open Social container.

If you recall how I previously described the Facebook platform as "a dramatic leap forward for the Internet industry", you'll understand why I think Open Social is the next big leap forward!

....

Are people really going to maintain multiple sets of front-end pages for their web sites for Facebook, Open Social, etc.?

I think so, yes. I think any web site going forward that wants maximum distribution across the largest number of users will have a single back-end, and then multiple sets of front-end pages:

• One set of standard HTML and Javascript pages for consumption by normal web browser.
• Another set of HTML and Javascript pages that use the Open Social API's Javascript calls for consumption with Open Social containers/social networks.
• A third set of pages in FBML (Facebook Markup Language) that use Facebook's proprietary APIs for consumption within Facebook as a Facebook app.
• Perhaps a fourth set of pages adapted for the Apple iPhone and/or other mobile devices.

So here's the low down. What OpenSocial API does

Techcrunch

OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Hosts agree to accept the API calls and return appropriate data. Google won’t try to provide universal API coverage for special use cases, instead focusing on the most common uses. Specialized functions/data can be accessed from the hosts directly via their own APIs.

Which social networks are involved with the OpenSocial API?

The initial Open Social partners, more than twice as many users as Facebook has today.

What's cool is that its easy for Facebook Developers to quickly transfer their current apps to OpenSocial.

Vanajax

Google partners supporting the OpenSocial initiative include social networks such as: Ning, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster and others; and Facebook and social web application studios such as: RockYou, Slide and others.

Gigaom

Google has managed to attract some of the key Facebook app companies Flixster, Rock You, Slide, and iLike to work with them on OpenSocial. The lure of expanding their widget base to other Social platforms such as hi5 and XING, perhaps was too hard for them to resist.

Ilike Quote from ShoppersStop

Creators of third-party applications are understandably optimistic. "In a lot of ways this is the greatest thing that could’ve happened to us," said Ali Partovi, CEO of social music site iLike. "We’ve already been very successful with that strategy on Facebook, but then spreading to every other social network out there without an open standard would be much more expensive, harder to justify, and harder to prioritize."

What Plaxo had to say:

Oracle and salesforce.com are also supporting Google’s OpenSocial efforts, which indicates that they have plans to add social networking elements to their application platforms.

Plaxo emailed a statement about OpenSocial this evening, getting ahead of the stampede:

“Dynamic profiles redefine what users should expect in terms of how they can represent themselves in a social or business network,” said Todd Masonis, Co-Founder and VP of Products for Plaxo. “We believe that users should have full control over what they share with whom – and that the catalog of widgets that they can choose from should be as open and diverse as the web itself. We are excited to support in dynamic profiles any application written to Google’s just–launched OpenSocial APIs. ”
So far not Myspace or Facebook. Will Google force their hand if the platform is a massive success?

Problems that OpenSocial fixes

Vanelsas

1. I want to be able to export my friends and contact information to any other service I choose. Lets be real. The network does not OWN that data.
2. Export my (multimedia) content to any other service I choose. Heck, if I want to burn a CD of all content I got or sent I can’t even do it.
3. I have friends and contacts on many different networks. I want a lifestream service that allows me to see all of their activity.
4. In relation to point 3, I want to be able to message any of my contacts, without having to go to a specific network.
5. In relation to point 4. I want to have presence information available over all networks.
6. I want to be able to write or publish content to multiple platforms in one action.
7. In relation to point 6. If I get the same entry across multiple networks or platforms that’s hardly efficient. So some intelligence to make sure I get the message on the most convenient way.
8. I want to be able to follow interesting topics regardless of where the conversation is taking place.
9. I want to be “on”as soon as I am connecting to the world. What do I mean by that?
10. I want excellent and easy to use privacy controls to go with points 1-9.

What does OpenSocial mean for Google?

Dan Farber

This openness is part of what Vic Gundotra, Google’s head of developer programs, meant when he said last week, “In the next year we will make a series of announcements and spend hundreds of millions on innovations and giving them away as open source.”

He explained the newfound openness as more than altruism: “It also makes good economic sense. The more applications, the more usage. More users means more searches. And, more searches means more revenue for Google. The goal is to grow the overall market, not just to increase market share.”

As cited above, OpenSocial is part of Google’s quest to increase usage of the Web. More applications can mean more searches and ad searches. You could also expect some new advertising services based on tapping into the OpenSocial APIs that work across all compliant social networks.

What does OpenSocial mean for Facebook and Facebook Developers?

First the flaw of the facebook platform.

Anil Dash

It's not true to say that Facebook is the new AOL, and it's oversimplification to say that Facebook's API is the new Blackbird, or the new Rainman. But Facebook is part of the web. Think of the web, of the Internet itself, as water. Proprietary platforms based on the web are ice cubes. They can, for a time, suspend themselves above the web at large. But over time, they only ever melt into the water. And maybe they make it better when they do.

The Facebook ramnifications.

Dan Farber

Facebook has a lot of wind behind its sails, but OpenSocial will cause developers to rethink their priorities. Developing OpenSocial applications will be easier than creating Facebook apps and will work across different social networks.

This could create some issues for Facebook, which is rumored to be cooking up a targeted ad service that can follow its members across the Web. And, Google, taking a page from Microsoft, has some confidence that over time it can build or buy its ways into a leading social network. Google will try to have its cake and eat it too.

And what OpenSocial means for Facebook Developers.

Ning

Today's Facebook app developers just got very good news -- they will be able to take all of the work they did to build their Facebook apps and create Open Social versions of their apps very easily... and by so doing, get access to a huge new pool of users -- as many as 100 million users just via the initial Open Social partners, more than twice as many users as Facebook has today.

As an app developer, there's no real reason to choose between Facebook and Open Social. It's easy to do both. You've already put in most of the effort -- creating a new set of front-end HTML and Javascript pages is almost trivial, and that's all you need to do to have your app "port" to Open Social and work within Open Social containers like Ning, Orkut, Hi5, and LinkedIn.

Dan Faber

Slide is the leading Facebook developer, claiming 63 million applications (SuperPoke, Top Friends, Slideshows, Guestbooks, SkinFlix and FunPix) installed. “So far we have ported several of our most popular applications from Facebook and MySpace,” Max Levchin, founder and CEO of Slide told me. However, consumers won’t get to play with those applications until December or January.

"OpenSocial is great. The user benefit is a shorter cycle before they see cool new apps and ways to spend more time on social networks independent of the network they are on," Levchin explained. "The most powerful implication is for developers. They’ll have less worry about in terms of complexity and back end integration."

Facebook still has 50 million users. Facebook + OpenSocial API = 150 million users.

Update: Myspace look to have joined OpenSocial API and already have a flixster app running through it. So thats another 50 million users from Myspace in the OpenSocial user base.

The best way to make money out of this phenomenon is to sell pots and pans like you do in any gold rush.

Hot Facebook app tips

Flickr say you own your photos and can do with them and license them the way you want.

Facebook say that you grant them a license which allows them to do whatever they want with the photos as long as they're up on their website.

I haven't read Facebooks privacy policy.

Facebook Terms of Use — Facebook Observer

Facebook | Pink Ribbon

LIVESTRONG and Fight Cancer with the Facebook App

Who Wants to Be a Facebook Millionaire?

Facebook is a technology company and a social utility.   Facebook is growing at 225k users per day and doubling every six months.  The new users are coming from people over the age of 25.  Mostly users outside the US (uk and canada dominate the international distribution).  Over 50% of users return each day.   60 billion pages every day.

The official definition:  Social Graph is the network of connections that exist through which people communicate and share information.  Applications like photos and events are examples that leverage the social graph.  Dave highlights that the Events App (written by Mark Zuckerberg in 8 hours one night) on Facebook is dwarfing evite because of the social graph and the network effects. 

Facebook will be open for developers and users.  I wonder what this means.???  Facebook is a young company and I think that they will do the right thing in making it 'really open'.  As Tim O'Reilly says whoever makes the developer money will win the platform war.  Right now Tim says that Facebook is a subsystem of the Internet platform.  If they make the right moves on the developer front they can win the platform war.

New features will harness the fact that Facebook is moving toward a metric of engagement.   New opportunities?  Three things important to Facebook:  managing the growth, get to engagement apps and metrics, and monetization on these new social patterns.

Dave says that Facebook has 90,000 developers and growing.  Facebook is excited and humbled by the outpouring of support from developers.  Another interesting stat - 80% of users have adopted at least one application. 

This is an attempt to create a repository of sample codes and tutorials for newbie developers who are keen on creating applications on the Facebook platform. I see a lot of posts in the Developer's Forum by people who are just starting out and need help with simple things like setting a profile box or keeping track of users who've added their apps.

Hopefully this blog will become a useful resource for all budding developers.

I'll start with some PHP and MySQL codes. If anybody wants to contribute codes for other programming languages, you're more than welcome.

Cheers
Sid

FaceBook platform attracts 1,000 developers a day - News - Builder AU
In less than a month, Facebook has attracted more than 40,000 developers who have already created around 1,500 applications for the social networking platform. At the Facebook Developer Meetup in New York last week, the mood was summed up by a clean-cut young entrepreneur who had written "I NEED AN APP" in thick black marker on his name tag.

I compiled the questions posed to Dave Morin into a 5 minute clip. You can easily fwd to specific questions by scrolling over the video.

If you are interested in seeing Dave Morin's Facebook Developers Meetup NYC introduction video you can here

(I will provide all videos in one post once they are all uploaded)

I will try to post the rest of the videos some time later, so stay tuned for Q&A with Mark Zuckerberg.

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On behalf of all attendees I would like to thank Amit Gupta for coordinating the event and Kristian Hansen (of Cresa Partners) for providing the space.

UPDATE: I would also like thank Dave Morin, Mark Zuckerberg, Meagan Marks, Kevin Colleran, Brandee Barker, and all the other Facebook folks that helped out.
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