The Facebook Phenomenon - The Future of Facebook
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Is the Future Bright?
With the recently acquired funds Mark Zuckerberg is planning to heavily expand Facebook. At this moment they employ approximately 300+ people but in the near future it should reach 700. As with every giant IT company there's always a slot for truly talented and exceptional engineers and "one-of-a-kind individuals."
(Facebook headquarters located at Palo Alto, CA.)
Let's talk about the particular developer features of the Facebook Platform - mostly about the Facebook Marked Language (FBML), Facebook Query Language (FQL), API (REST Web Service) and Facebook JavaScript (FBJS). It is important to understand that because of these features, coders are able to develop their own applications on the Facebook Platform.
FBML is an evolved subset of HTML with some elements removed. It allows application writers to develop and integrate applications deeply into the Facebook Platform. They can configure their "look & feel," reach specifics like profiles, canvas news feeds, and such. This is the way Facebook servers "understand" your code.
FQL is a SQL-like query language. It assists the programmers because it's much easier to code in a sort of traditional language rather than depend on complex API methodologies to do the same queries. With FQL you can query data from the database.
Likewise, the Facebook API uses a REST-based interface. The code you write will get read, parsed, executed, and published on the Facebook REST servers. You simply call the functions and they do their job. Its impressively thorough privacy checks and security systems are analyzing and keeping track of your actions.
You can read in-depth information about these from the official documentation that's reachable through the Facebook Developers Wiki. Using these features you can maximize your overall Facebook experience.
The success of these features and Facebook's markup languages was, simply put, tremendous. Right now there are more than 5,500 applications hosted on Facebook servers. They all are coded and run on the Facebook Platform. Likewise, the MySpace Platform is currently in development and they would really like to follow in Facebook's footsteps.
Most of the applications on the Facebook Platform are for entertainment but a significantly smaller number are business-related too. The race toward getting your application published and ranked within the best on Facebook sparks competition between programmers. Therefore, this is an amazing opportunity to stand out from the crowd. If your application gets downloaded by numerous users, you'll certainly earn some bucks as a reward.
Apparently more than 70,000 programmers are developing applications for Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg's vision is that the business aspect of this must be boosted. It could serve as a starting point for entrepreneurs and managers looking for talented employees, an amazing job hunting land where companies could list their currently available jobs, etc.
What we cannot know is how this "particular" Facebook Platform with all of its markup languages will face the competitor's (Google) OpenSocial solution? OpenSocial is a set of common APIs for building various social applications with the freedom of interpolation through various networks. It was designed with maximum flexibility to ensure maximum portability over different social networks like Orkut, Hi5, Ning, etc.
Recently Facebook has launched fbFund, which aids as a simple funding campaign. The Facebook company is able to finance starting entrepreneurs to jump start their business with sums up to $250,000 as long as they have not raised any formal venture funding and agree to develop their business based on the renowned Facebook Platform.
Next: Facebook Statistics and Concluding Thoughts >>
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