Serverless Facebook apps anywhere

Just before the weekend, Facebook quietly released a rather cool piece of technology. Here’s what they say about it:

This JavaScript client library allows you to make Facebook API calls from any web site and makes it easy to create Ajax Facebook applications. Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any web site that serves static HTML.

Their Javascript client library allows nearly full read/write access to Facebook through their API. Basically, this means you can create a serverless Facebook app. I’m not saying you will want to, but it’s possible (biggest drawback: all your code is easily viewable to competitors). This to me looks like Facebook’s answer to OpenSocial.

It doesn’t support multiple social networks yet, but it’s the essential client-side piece of the puzzle (which Google itself hasn’t even fully nailed yet). We’ve heard rumors of Facebook being willing to license their app platform tech. I believe it’s just a matter of time before Facebook releases a more comepelling and free alternative to OpenSocial. In short, what we’re seeing is Facebook out-teching Google and company, and it’s a rather amazing thing to witness.

Let’s just pause to count Facebook’s recent innovations: a news feed program that filters trillions of items, an app platform that brings huge value to themselves, their users, and outside developers, and now a client library for building apps outside of Facebook. They even built their own Javascript platform called FBJS, which allows DOM manipulation and AJAX. They also wrote and open-sourced an animation library that they say is better than the other libraries out there (I can’t confirm that yet).

No matter what you think of Facebook, they are building a great technology platform. This is why I refuse to underestimate their value in the long term. They’re hooking people on a simpler and more functional social network platform (in comparison to MySpace), and they are building technology that gives them a major edge. I think they’ve only just begun to surprise us.