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After: Requests, Events/Birthdays, Suggestions, Highlights, Sponsored, Connect

Step 1: install Greasemonkey (Firefox) or GreaseKit (Safari), and restart your browser
Step 2: install my Facebook Reorder Sidebar userscript
Step 3: visit Facebook and enjoy

Great post!  In a way, I would strongly agree with you.  In a way, I desire more integration.  Ironically, I actually found/read your post through Facebook Notes because you tagged Richard.

I, too, am an avid user of the “best” social networks (Flickr for photos, del.icio.us for bookmarks, YouTube for videos, LinkedIn for professional networking, etc).

Here’s what I like about what Facebook is doing: making these services available and known for “the masses”.  Blogging/Notes, Photo Sharing, and now Shares.  For people who wouldn’t normally use any of these features at the above named other websites, this is great.

Automatically recognizing blogs listed as “websites” and integrating/importing blog posts as Notes is genius.

In my opinion, this is the kind of the thing that Facebook really needs to do.  Here is another example:

What if Facebook extended this type of functionality to watch your del.icio.us (and other popular/competing sites) bookmarks and automatically import them into “My Shares”?
[Aside: you may not want to pollute everyones News Feed each time someone bookmarks something, but perhaps a message like: "Phil Freo has Shared _7 items_ today." with a link to those items would be good.]

The magic for Facebook can then happen when a lot of del.icio.us users have all their bookmarks as Shares.  “Normal users” (the kind that don’t use del.icio.us) can then benefit from everyone else using it by being able to search/find the best websites about anything.    By keeping the current Shares model, I would never think to search Facebook Shares for a good website (or search my own bookmarks) – but this would cause me and a lot of other people to rely on Facebook for even more, which is exactly what they should want.

So, what else can Facebook do to both integrate *and* allow non-techies to benefit from?  Here’s three to get you started.

1. Automatically watch/import/tag my del.icio.us (and competing) bookmarks as Shares.
2. Automatically watch/import my blog’s comments in imported Notes
3. Automatically watch/import/tag my Flickr photos where possible into My Photos.

[Aside: yes, there are issues with each of these, but I'm more than confident they can be worked out.]

For the average user, there is just a massive amount of very valuable content on Facebook.  For the power user, they now have all of their own content on Facebook.  Everyone would then be happier – especially Facebook.

What I do find interesting, is how the site identifies users as unique…

As my friend Bryan Scott (of CampusTrade.com) recently mentioned, it is extremely easy for someone to get multiple email addresses. What is not easy to get is multiple cell phones. Therefore, if websites should use cell phones as unique identifiers to make it much harder for spammers and bots to abuse systems. Two weeks ago we were trying to figure out what that means for TapNote, and today Facebook is using the same idea.

Public email account users (those without a school or work email address) who do not confirm their cell phone address on Facebook can still do everything on the site. They are, however, required to enter one of those “are you a human” image codes every time they want to interact with someone on the website.

By doing this, Facebook has ensured that it stays spam-free, as it grows extremely quickly. I can only image where Facebook will be in another year. And I don’t just mean at Yahoo!.

Clearly Facebook is wanting to get into as many areas of social networking as possible, with the recent release of the Facebook API (developers.facebook.com). I’m glad they’re becoming more open, as well as trying to integrate with existing blogging platforms. Although I’m not sure quite what I think about their term “Notes,” I’m glad they are bringing blogging into an even more “mainstream audience”.

One key thing to note: the API does not allow the retrieval of member’s ever-so-crucial contact information (neither cell number nor email address).

My guess is Facebook is trying to protect its most valuable asset: a huge directory of contact information, while at the same time protecting its members from getting spammed as a result of the API. The API has a decent balance of allowing developers to do what they want, while still pointing a lot of traffic back to Facebook.com. For example, you call pull a lot of information about friends, photos, walls, and so on, but anytime you want to let a user actually do something on facebook (write a message, poke, make friends, etc), they have to be directed back to the site. This makes sense in regards to security and Facebook’s business model. Nobody can really screw up their own facebook account through a malicious API, nor can anyone easily create a Facebook competitor.

I’m looking for good ideas for an application using Facebook’s API. I have a couple ideas already in dealing with photos, which I may try and implement if someone doesn’t beat me to it. I’m just wondering how long until someone makes a Facebook “Hot or Not” website.

Edits:
Interesting: I just got my Facebook API key / “developer account” and was given an “app_id” of 151. So two products have been submitted to the directory, while 149 other people have received API keys already. It will be interesting to see how many of these turn into production applications, my guess is less than 5%.

I also like seeing the Facebook Developers Discussion Board. It’s getting to be active quickly and is a good place to keep an eye for applications in development.

I also believe Flock could benefit greatly from this by increasing its photo support from Flickr and Photobucket to include Facebook Photos, as well as notifications to wall changes, friend changes, etc. Note to self: email a flock community ambassador.