With the release of its API for developers to work upon, Facebook in one stroke has hit the fortified walls that shielded the social network sites - MySpace, Bebo, TagWorld, Hi5 et al. Now the theme of the game is bound to change and the focus will be to build content, services, apps around these APIs. Liz in GigaOm writes that already the Facebook developers’ discussion board has all sorts of ideas on Facebook widgets and mashups, address book and music service integration, chatrooms etc., etc. I tried to see what all was going on inside, but I got this message - The page you requested was not found.



In another development, XuQa, the college social networking site similar to Facebook is allowing members to import their complete MySpace profiles. Other social networking sites can be expected to do the same soon.



Anyway, so what does this mean? So do we see that other social networking sites opening up their APIs? Just imagine what if the most popular social networking sites were to open up their APIs as well like MySpace.



This is interesting because if the social networks get integrated, it will have the same effect as the integration of many IM/VoIP service providers through open common protocols as Jabber Software Foundation’s (JSF) Jingle for VoIP. Then instead of logging in on different social networking sites, one can access the other networks of the common integrated community.



One thing comes to my mind now. Google was one of the first to support the JSF’s community standards process for VoIP and released the GoogleTalk API within three days following the publishing of the initial documentation of Jingle by Jabber Software Foundation. Google has its own social networking site orkut. But orkut membership is only possible through invitation by other orkut members. It is a perfect example of a walled garden as of now. Will Google release the API of orkut as well? After all, Google is a champion of similar causes, right?



Ok, now coming back to Facebook API, it is free now. However, that may change as Facebook has reserved the right to charge for this. It would be rather interesting to see the effects of this masterstroke by Facebook on other social networking sites.