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The public web is made up of linked pages that represent both documents and people. Google Search helps make this information more accessible and useful. If you take away the documents, you’re left with the connections between people. Information about the public connections between people is really useful — as a user, you might want to see who else you’re connected to, and as a developer of social applications, you can provide better features for your users if you know who their public friends are. There hasn’t been a good way to access this information. The Social Graph API now makes information about the public connections between people on the Web, expressed by XFN and FOAF markup and other publicly declared connections, easily available and useful for developers.
The Facebook JavaScript client library allows you to make Facebook API calls through JavaScript code from any Web site and makes it easy to create AJAX Facebook applications. Since the library does not require any server side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any Web site that serves static HTML.
Applications that use this client library should be configured to load in an iframe, not be rendered with FBML. This applies to either iframe Facebook applications that users access through the Facebook Web site or applications that users access directly on the application’s own Web site. The library supports every Facebook API method, except:
Using this client library is easy. Just follow these two steps:
That’s all. Now you start to call the Facebook API through JavaScript…
Below is Tim Berners-Lee’s post that coined the term, ‘the Giant Global Graph’…and why I now own the GiantGlobalGraph.us, CloudGraph.com and GraphCloud.com domain names.
“Well, it has been a long time since my last post here. So many topics, so little time. Some talks, a couple of Design Issues articles, but no blog posts. To dissipate the worry of expectation of quality, I resolve to lower the bar. More about what I had for breakfast.
So The Graph word has been creeping in. BradFitz talks of the Social Graph as does Alex Iskold, who discusses social graphs and network theory in general, points out that users want to own their own social graphs. He also points out that examples of graphs are the Internet and the Web. So what’s with the Graph word?
Maybe it is because Net and Web have been used. For perfectly good things .. but different things. (more…)
Update: MySpace, SixApart, and Bebo have officially joined the OpenSocial!
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:
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. (more…)
Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick
Linden Labs, makers of Second Life
, announced a partnership with IBM and nearly 30 other companies today to work on creating a layer of interoperability across all online virtual worlds. This layer, the plans for which are being discussed publicly for the first time at today’s Virtual Worlds Expo in San Jose, would allow users to port identities and other assets from one virtual world to another.
It’s a logical next step for the medium of virtual worlds and one that could cause their number and size to grow substantially. It could also lead to bitter, if sometimes humorous, conflict between users identified primarily with different sites. Nick Carr warned this morning that the move will likely lead attacks on peaceful Second Life residents by ogres from World of Warcraft.
There is some controversy floating around the blogosphere about the nature of the next web. We got a clear signal from Tim O’Reilly that there is no need to continue the versioning fad and call it “Web 3.0,” but still, people disagree about what’s coming next. To me, what is coming is not a single thing, but a web that is characterized by several major themes.Among the evolving aspects of the new web are Semantics, Attention (Implicit Behavior) and Personalization. Regardless of what we are decide to call this next web, the information in it is going to be more meaningful, more automatic, and more tailored to each of us.
A critical piece of the next web evolution is the introduction of structured information. This concept is so basic to us as humans, that we completely overlook the fact that it is quite foreign to computers. When a person looks at a book on Amazon, she sees a book, with the author, ISBN number, publisher and the publication date. To a computer that page on Amazon is nothing more than a bunch of HTML. Increasingly, information on the web is becoming more and more structured. This process is happening via several major movements: (more…)
{via TechCrunch} :: MySpace is gearing up to launch MySpace Platform, according to a number of third party developers who’ve been contacted for input on the product. While this has been rumored since June, this is the first indication that the service is preparing to actually launch. And we also have information that suggests that it will be announced next week at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.The new developer platform, like Facebook Platform which was announced in May, will essentially be a set of APIs and a new markup language that will allow third party developers to create applications that run within MySpace. Developers will be able to include Flash applets, iFrame elements and Javascript snippets in their applications, and access most of the core MySpace resources (profile information, friend list, activity history, etc.). Applications will need to be hosted on MySpace servers.
And in a big change in strategy for MySpace, developers will be able to serve their own advertising within their applications, and keep 100% of the revenue (Facebook also allows this).
Suddenly Facebook, with nearly 5,500 third party applications, has significant competition around their platform - Within a month both MySpace and Google (see our post here) will probably have launched their own services. Platform competition is great for developers, but it also means they need to create and maintain separate code for each platform they choose to play on. Someone is hopefully working on a startup that will streamline that process for people. Whoever does it first, and best, can have a winner on their hands.
