Facebook Developers

We're excited to announce today the general availability of Facebook Connect, the next evolution of Facebook Platform. Since May 2007, Platform has rapidly evolved from 100 early ideas to over 52,000 applications with 14 billion page views per month. Over 70% of Facebook users actively use at least one application per month, and over 4,200 applications have more than 10,000 users per month. All of these applications have been built using Platform’s core services. These services allow users to use their profile in applications, easily find their friends, and share information and experiences with their friends through Feed, requests, and more.

With Facebook Connect, you can take the same Platform features and tools that you’ve used to grow your applications successfully, and integrate them into your own website. Key features that you can now bring to your own website include:

In short, Facebook Connect lets users log in to a site using their Facebook account, bring their profile with them, easily find friends also using the website, and share information and experiences using the same features as they would on a Facebook application. Pretty much every feature that you can build with an application on Facebook can be offered through Facebook Connect.

We've seen early and great results already with sites using Facebook Connect. Many sites are already live, including Citysearch (share reviews with your friends), TechCrunch (use your Facebook account to post comments), vLane (shop for cars with your friends input), and Howcast (comment and share how-to videos). These are just a sampling of the many sites that launched during our beta period. Early results have been very positive: as many as 2/3 of users registering for the sites are doing so with their Facebook accounts and taking as much as 50% more actions on the sites.

Now it's your turn to make your website more social with Facebook Connect. So check out our documentation and our sample site, The Run Around, and start Connecting!

P.S. To all of those great developers who applied during our beta period, we apologize for any delays in getting back to you. Feel free to launch now!

Last week we headed over to India to kick off a series of all-new Facebook Developer Garage events. This coming week we are heading over to Europe's premiere internet conference, Le Web. Last year, Le Web attracted participants from over 40 countries. This year Le Web boasts over 1500 participants from all parts of the world, including speakers such as Paulo Coelho author of "The Alchemist".

We're excited to be participating in Le Web and to be speaking alongside of many luminaries in the web world. The theme this year is "Love, for a healthy dose of optimism." At Facebook we are optimistic about the future of a more open and connected world.

This year, we've partnered with Le Web to offer you both great content and a great experience with 3 different Facebook experiences where you can hear about the newest innovations on Facebook Platform, such as Facebook Connect, and do a deep dive into how to create great applications for the social web:

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 - 9:00AM
Platform Love: Getting Along Panel
Senior Platform Manager, Dave Morin

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 - 1:00PM
>Facebook Developer Garage - Paris

Schedule
1-1:50 Introduction to Facebook Platform (Dave Morin, Senior Platform Manager, Facebook)
2-2:50 Facebook Connect: Building your Integration (Franck Mahon, Netvibes)
3-3:50 The Games Space on Facebook (Mathieu Nouzareth, President & CEO, Cafe.com/Boonty)
4-4:50 Building your Facebook App: Integrating in the New Design with FBML or iframes (KRDS)
5-5:50 Metrics on Facebook: Leveraging Metrics to build on Platform (Nick Bushak, Facebook Platform Intern)

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 - 10:00PM
LeWeb'08 Closing Party with TechCrunch and Facebook

We hope to see you there!

And, if you'd like to meet up during the event to discuss making your site or application more social through Facebook Platform or Facebook Connect, drop me a line on Facebook or follow me on Twitter (@davemorin). I would LOVE to chat about the future of the social web with you.

We’re excited that developers from all over the world are building on Facebook, and thrilled when we have the opportunity to meet them. This past weekend I spoke at the first ever Facebook Developer Garage in India hosted by Tekriti Software in New Delhi. (Gurgaon, to be precise.) We started the day with an overview of Facebook, including developments since the Platform's launch in mid 2007, updates on some of our recent announcements (including our partnership with Salesforce and the Application Verification Program), and we talked at length about Facebook Connect.

After my talk, we listened to developers share their experiences with Platform. Infrablue Technology, creator of Twenty20 Cricket (one of our FbFundees), shared their experiences creating one of the first fantasy applications on Facebook focused entirely on cricket. Then Vikas Jawa from Zoomtra (an Indian travel brand) shared his key learnings from creating their app, India Dekha. India Dekha allows users to share all of the places in India where they have traveled, would like to travel, or would like to highlight. He shared great insights, such as: "know what you want – for us, it was branding and to help generate user-generated content" and "find reasons for users to come back – make it engaging."

Throughout the rest of the day we heard from developers creating multi-platform experiences, as well as giving each other technical advice, for example, the benefits of delaying require_login() for users (it allows them to see much more of an app before having to share their own data and click "allow.")

The enthusiasm in the air was palpable, and the organizers have already been asked to host more garages in Delhi. Some of the attendees are excited to host their own garage in Bangladesh early in the new year.

For me, it was a fantastic opportunity to see the similarities and differences between our developers around the world. Infrastructure is clearly an issue in India (we had three power outages during the garage alone!) but all developers worldwide want to better understand ways to make more engaging and compelling apps.

Hats off to Tekriti Software for a job well done – I can’t wait to meet the next generation of developers at a garage somewhere else in the world... maybe your home town?