A steady stream of information flows through Facebook everyday just as it dimageoes in Twitter. But up until now, one couldn’t access the string of Facebook status updates being posted by people known and unknown, with or without a Facebook account.

But Facebook has recently announced plans to open up its API, so now the information that appears in user home pages and profiles will become available to third party developers who can build new services and applications based on the data being made publicly available. Previously, developers were able to access facebook's own API to build customized Facebook applications using the Facebook markup language (FBML).

This is a big change in the business model of the facebook social networking site. Developers can now build services that can access what users upload to Facebook – like photos, videos, notes, comments, etc. The user would need to explicitly provide option or permission for his uploadings to become available through the facebook distribution API.

Facebook has said that the use of the API would be free as of now. Facebook believes that the availability of the API would build user loyalty and get more people to engage more often with the site.image

The user's default privacy settings will extend to any new services being built by third-party developers based on the Facebook API. Facebook also said developers can pull Facebook data using an open technology standard that other sites can also use. This can likely broaden Facebook's appeal.

Facebook has some 200 million worldwide users, and with the opening up of the public API Facebook is trans-mogrifying into Twitter, another micro-blogging service that is limited to 140 character status updates. So in effect Twitter + more number of characters would be Facebook.


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