The One Big Thing you need to know this week is that Facebook has opened up the activity stream to developers.
In the blog post about the Open Stream API, Facebook tells developers:
“…you can access the stream on behalf of a user and then filter, remix, and display the stream back to that user however you choose, wherever you choose, in the manner most relevant for the user experience. Other new API methods will allow users to both publish into the stream and to add comments and “likes” to posts in the stream.”
Most significantly, though, the new API allows the stream to move beyond the walled garden that is Facebook, making your network activity potentially portable.
“It potentially puts Facebook side by side with Twitter in all of these desktop and mobile client applications where a lot of the real-time conversation is happening and lets it compete head-to-head with Twitter. Whichever conversation stream is more interesting will prevail.”
Seesmic has already developed an Adobe Air client for the stream.
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