Facebook Becomes a Software Company with Platform Rollout
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While Web platforms and tools providers over the past decade have been opining at length over the potential ubiquity of Web services that perform simple and specialized data-fetching tasks for individual customers, Facebook today tried a completely new spin on the old message: actually doing it.
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Firefox co-founders get networking Facebook, the ubiquitous, in-your-face social [cough] networking website, has acquired Parakey, a startup run by the co-founders of Mozilla Firefox.â¦
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CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about changes at Facebook, his super-popular social-networking site. By Aria Pearson from Wired magazine.
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The online application vendor has ported its productivity tools to the social networking site.
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By Constance Loizos, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Sep. 22--Facebook, the social-networking start-up popular with high  school and college students, is on the verge of being purchased by Yahoo,  according to two sources with knowledge of the deal.
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Microsoft's overture toward Facebook may be a prelude to an IPO.
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Facebook Inc. is offering to pay up to $250,000 to software developers who create applications that help make its rapidly growing online social network an even more compelling Internet hangout.
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(InfoWorld) - Social networking site Facebook has bought Parakey, a tiny startup that had been developing software it bills as a Web-based operating system. The Mountain View, California, startup has not actually shipped a product, but is in the process of developing technology it says combines the best of the desktop and Web-based software world. In a November 2006 interview Parakey founder Blake Ross described the company's eponymous product as "a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do." Ross and Parakey's other founder Joe Hewitt will work on Facebook's Web site as well as the Facebook Platform, a set of application program interfaces (APIs) that developers can use to write applications for the social networking site. Previously the two entrepreneurs had been co-founders of the Firefox open source browser project. They formed Parakey in 2006. Founded in 2004, the privately held Facebook boasts 31 million users. Parakey is the company's first acquisition. Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed.
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Following Facebook's lead, the social networking site plans within the next few months to make an API for its platform available for anyone looking to build applications to run atop the site.
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The success of Facebook's Web-app building tools hasn't gone unnoticed by Salesforce.com, which on Friday announced a new platform for building on-demand business software that it hopes will lead to an "explosion" of applications.
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Facebook lands a Web-based operating system company with pedigree papers.
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Facebook will help other social networking sites to run applications developed for its own software platform, it said Thursday.
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BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd    has launched Facebook software designed  especially for its smartphones to make it easier for users to  browse the popular social networking Web site.
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(InfoWorld) - Three months after it opened its platform to outside developers, Facebook is taking steps to prevent some third-party applications from engaging in what the social networking company considers inappropriate actions. Dave Morin, Facebook's senior platform manager, outlined late Monday in an official blog posting a series of changes in the capabilities it makes available to external developers. In the blog posting, titled "Change is Coming," Morin states that the changes are designed to create an environment in which the popularity of applications is determined by how useful and entertaining they are. For example, Facebook wants to stop developers from displaying big boxes in profiles that scream in capital letters messages like "ADD THIS APPLICATION!" to visitors, while hiding them from profile owners. To that end, the latest release of the Facebook Markup Language -- version 1.1 -- changes how profile boxes display content, removing applications' ability to display profile content to visitors and hide it from profile owners. "We did this so that the user is always aware of how they are expressing themselves to their friends through your application. This means no more yellow boxes that display 'Add this app!' in the profile box without the user knowing about it," Morin wrote. "We think this will help users make more informed decisions about the profile boxes they choose." Meanwhile, this week, Facebook will shift how it measures application popularity in its applications directory away from total users and toward user engagement. "This will help inform users as they make decisions on which applications to add," Morin wrote. The company will also remove e-mail from a notifications capability for developers to contact users who have adopted their applications. The reason is to crack down on what Facebook considers the spamming of deceptive and misleading notifications to its members. Earlier this month, Morin posted a blog item about this problem, stating that Facebook had noticed developers misleading users "into clicking on links, adding applications and taking actions." Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
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Facebook wants to make its members' profiles portable, get a handle on software developers, launch ad platform.
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Software dinosaur Microsoft paid millions for a tiny piece of trendy internet property Facebook. But the company needs something to make it hot again
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BREAKING NEWS - This afternoon, Microsoft won the apparent battle for an equity stake in social networking applications provider Facebook, making a $240 million equity investment in the company. In exchange, Microsoft will become the exclusive third-party supplier of Facebook's advertising platform.