Facebook Opens Stream To Devs

Web and mobile developers can create applications and Web sites that let Facebook users access their news streams without visiting Facebook.com.

Facebook wants to energize its developer community in order to combat rivals like MySpace and Twitter, and it's giving them access to users' news streams through an open platform.

With the Open Stream API, third-party developers can create apps that let users view photos, status updates, events, and other information from their Facebook account without ever visiting the Web site. These new apps can display this information with desktop and mobile clients, as well as on other Web sites that can ditch the Facebook user interface altogether if users desire. Programmers could also use this API to create new apps within Facebook that could filter or remix the news stream.