April 28, 2009 Facebook opens up new possibilities with Open Stream Play video

(NECN: Ted McEnroe) - Facebook has announced that it is opening up more of its data to developers, allowing them to build more and better applications for the Facebook platform. And while it sounds a little scary - it's not - and it could be just the thing to get you to make Facebook a more productive part of your life.

The company showed off a couple of programs which use the new platform, which Facebook calls 'Open Stream'. What Open Stream allows is for third-party developers to be able to tap into your feed of posts, etc., to create new programs.

For example, one of my favorite programs, Seesmic Desktop, which is a Twitter client only right now, will come out with an update that allows you update your Facebook stream and monitor your friends streams through its software, meaning you don't have to log in to Facebook constantly to see what your friends are up to - and even integrate the facebook updates into your main stream. A second company, Xobni, which is a great organizational tool for Microsoft Outlook, is going to use the data to be able to pull in the Facebook information for people in your contacts - so if they update something, you'll get it in Microsoft Outlook. And a third, the social address book system Plaxo, is going to use the data to integrate your Facebook friends and Plaxo contacts - so you don't have to log into two networks. A lot

And it's just the tip of the iceberg as developers get more involved in using Open Stream.

But Facebook saved one of the best things for consumers for last. Facebook is becoming part of the OpenID system. OpenId allows users to log in once and get access to any number of trusted sites, without having to log in multiple times. So, for example. if I am logged into GMail using OpenID, and I go to Facebook - Facebook will recognize that I am coming from a trusted site and let me come in, without having to log in again.

This does raise some understandable concerns about where your data is going - but all of these things are opt-in. YOU decide what YOU are willing to put out there - and if it's already going on Facebook, you're already making it pretty public.

All of these things are little, but they add up to a more powerful system of data portability for the users. Facebook is dipping its foot in the water with Open Stream - here's hoping it goes well enough to make more moves in that direction.

I also wanted to mention the new tag cloud just below the player on NECN.com. It lets you search the site by keywords, which are entered for each story we post by an actual human web producer, highlighting the keywords in any story. So if you want to find stories about President Obama rather than ones that just mention him, using a keyword search will do that. I'll probably make this its own post online sometime soon.