Because it's fairly important that widgets have somewhere to go to, we love it when we hear that Social-Networking Sites Open Up. We will roll out our own APIs later this year to allow anyone to integrate with our widget engine - and we welcome any destination that gives us APIs to push widgets in to.
Now, several social networks are about to open up. Facebook—aimed at college students and a pioneer in opening up its APIs—will move its developer program out of beta testing. The company won't say exactly when it will make its software generally available, but says it will be soon. Rivals such as News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace.com, LinkedIn, Friendster, and Google's (GOOG) orkut are expected to follow suit and open their code to third-party developers this year as well—promising to kick off a spurt of innovation in social networking. "Part of what's exciting about a developer community is you don't know what people are going to do," says Lucian Beebe, director of product management at LinkedIn, which is considering opening up its software. "It offers you the ability to harness innovation."
Facebook, orkut, and Friendster confirm they are actively looking at making their software specs available to developers (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/27/07, "Building a Safer MySpace"). MySpace declined to comment.
Most social networks say they see clear benefits in opening up their code. Since Facebook, a network of 17 million college students, started a pilot program last summer, third-party developers have created some 100 new applications. Now a Facebook user name and password can be used to log in to content-sharing and chat site Mosoto, and to automatically import Facebook friends into Mosoto's buddy list for chat. Facebook itself does not offer a chat function (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/1/06, "Facebook's Changing Fortunes"). "This is really just the tip of the iceberg," says Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive officer. "We realize we can never provide all applications [our users want]."
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