June 24, 2007
Foo Camp: Facebook Platform
Adam D'Angelo - CTO, Facebook
Facebook platform - growth so far (all in one month):
- half of all facebook users have added an application
- 19 apps with > 1 million users
- 30m page views/day to apps
Apps can be distributed via each other's profile - look at your friends, see what they have, get it that way (viral)
If you build on top of facebook, you get to know your users, but also who all of their friends are.
Adam D'Angelo of Facebook describing the Facebook Application Platoform.
Facebook apps on platform exist as same class as 1st party facebook apps (i.e. photos, notes, etc).
Right now, same difficulty as building a normal web application. Try to make it easier going forward.
The canvas page just has facebook header and sidebar, main content is rendered by the app. Done as a proxy - user sends HTTP GET to facebook, they turn around and send a GET to your app, put it all together, and send back to user. The second GET will include information from Facebook - the user, some guarantee that it is them, etc.
Allow HTML, CSS, even flash to come through on on canvas page. Only restriction is that you don't do fishing (look like facebook). Can even run ads.