Yes, I promised new things well over a week ago. My excuse is that I picked up a cold during my trip to the Middle of Nowhere that took me out of commission for a solid week. :P But, now that that is over...
There are, in fact, new things to check out. The BeerRiot Facebook app is open for business. :)
I'll probably talk more about how the development went in another post. Right now, though, I'm thinking over the whole "Walled Garden" argument.
For many of the apps, both the data source and the data sink reside inside the Garden - Facebookers talk to other Facebookers. For another large chunk, the data source is outside, but the sink is still inside - Stock quotes, sports scores, etc.
For BeerRiot, I've managed to allow the data source as well as the data sink to be on either side of the wall. Beers and comments added by Facebookers can be seen by non-Facebookers, and the other way around. Really, I'm just using Facebook something like an OpenID provider.
Of course, for some apps this isn't necessary, and for others it may be impossible. But, it feels like this is the right way to think going forward. Using this method, there would be nothing stopping me from bridging more walls to connect more gardens together, while still keeping the web at large in the loop.
Okay, I'm about to fall asleep, and I can't tell if this blog post is just simple fluff or not, but I'm going to post it anyway. Post in the comments if you like/dislike the FB app, what you think of Walled Gardens, or how bad this post really is.
Categories: Development Facebook
Post Copyright © 2007 Bryan Fink