Facebook® Application Development For Dummies®

Releasing your application to the building block Web

After you create your farm, you can take it one step further and allow other people to access your farm. You do this by enabling APIs and pieces of data you release to other developers to use on their own Web sites (or farms). I call this “the building block Web.”

In the early days of the Web (back in those days, they versioned it Web 1.0), Web site owners built their own sites. These sites were built entirely for readers to find, come back frequently, and read or purchase items from. You couldn't extract the data from those sites, nor could you know when new data existed. All users had was a browser, something like Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, which they used to view the Web. These browsers were users' only peek into those Web sites. In those days, the browser was “the platform” and was what Web developers would use to organize and share their data with users.

Shortly afterward, developers began to build simple access points into their data. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) came about, enabling programs to know when new data existed for a Web site and enabling readers to easily recognize and parse that data. XML-RPC, SOAP, and REST all came about, giving developers even more access to data from those Web sites. Very soon, Web 2.0 emerged, making the Web itself “the platform.”

I see a new platform emerging with technologies such as Facebook. This one focuses on the very platforms themselves. Now every Web site is expected ...