San Jose (CA) – Facebook has announced the availability of its “Open Stream” API for developers.
“Today we are excited to announce an unprecedented step toward greater openness through Facebook Platform. For the first time, we’re opening the core Facebook product experience – the stream – with the new Facebook Open Stream API,” read a company blog post.
According to Facebook, API users will leverage applications to read and interact with the stream. Posts can then be published “on a mobile device, Web site or desktop.”
Open Stream, which was was designed to accomodate the nascent Activity Streams standard, reportedly includes two new APIs known as stream.get and stream.publish. The API’s, along with new FQL tables, allow developers to “filter, remix, and display the stream back to users” in various configurations.
Facebook has already recruited a number of beta partners to test Open Stream. For example, Seesmic Desktop is now a full-featured client for the stream and Adobe has created a simple stream Notifier using the AIR development framework.
The popular social networking site also addressed relevant privacy concerns by emphasizing that applications would require the permission of a user before accessing the fast-flowing stream.
