Facebook adds support for displaying Applications on external web pages

In what seems to me like a move encouraged by Microsoft (and as a further strike at OpenSocial), Facebook recently restructured their platform and API to pull down some of the garden walls. As Mashable reported:

Nick O’Neill of AllFacebook is reporting today that, without much fanfare, Facebook integrated their platform with their API. What does this mean to you and me? It seems that your favorite applications could possibly start popping up on ordinary websites and blogs any day now.

Web apps will be able to use cookies to track the users when they are using the app in other places on the Internet. So, in theory, you could play a game on any site and your stats will still be tracked.

So that’s what it means to “you and me.” What does it mean for an application developer?

By now, everyone is familiar with sidebar widgets. Those little mini-programs that people can embed in various portions of their websites are a great way to easily multiply exposure of your features and functionality across tons of sites.

But one of the big drawbacks of classic widgets is that there’s a limit to what you can really do with the user who plays with your app for a few minutes on a third party website. You don’t have a really reliable central data set about the user. You can’t really give a user stats or rewards unless they click through to your site. And you can’t put your widget on Facebook without re-coding it for their platform.

But now, if you build a Facebook application, you’ll be able to “widgetize” it for external sites as well as for people’s Facebook profiles. And what’s even better, you’ll be able to use cookies to track who is using your app on external sites. Hmmm…opportunities abound.

Welcome to our community! If you like what you see, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed!