Three months ago, I published the media prediction that Facebook would “open” up itsnetwork by simply allowing people to let others follow them even if they were not friends. They are going two steps further… ReadWriteWeb reports Facebook’s announcement that they would open up their firehose of data to third party developers. Last week (via NY Times), Facebook also reported they will add user locational data to their streams, in order to match up with the mobile utility provided by Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter and other geolocational apps. Facebook was founded on and until recently maintained the policy of preserving member privacy, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepared for these recent announcements to open membership data in January by essentially saying the age of privacy is over. Developers will soon build applications to use and distribute member data similar to those now based on the Twitter API. The real time web becomes amplified once Facebook status updates potentially become the leading communication currency based on its massive membership.
