[Myexperiment-discuss] Facebook application platform

[Steve Pettifer]

One thing I suppose we should be considering, or at least have a good  
answer somewhere obvious as to why-not, is the facebook application  
developer platform.

http://developers.facebook.com/get_started.php

Just in case someone hasn't come across it, facebook is yet-another  
social networking site. However, unlike myspace, it seems reasonably  
well controlled, and is a bit more 'serious/professional' (i.e. it's  
not covered in insane textures, and doesn't play Your Favourite Mp3  
as soon as you look at someone's page -- though i've just noticed  
someone has added an application that allows you to throw pies at  
your friends, so maybe not that serious...). It seems slightly more  
aimed at adults rather than just teenagers, but isn't quite as dull  
and specific as something like linkedin.com.  It also has a _lot_ of  
good functionality on the social side (and there are a surprising  
number of manchester CS people on there already!), and in particular  
what seems like a very sane API for adding in one's own applications  
for sharing stuff. The API is there to allow you to embed your own  
services in the facebook pages; storing and retrieving data can be  
from any server / system you like I believe.

So the question is... Why are we going to the effort of building all  
the social networking side for myExperiment, rather than exploiting  
what's already there in facebook (or other) and adding in the  
scientific part. The obvious advantage of the facebook approach would  
be that there are already a large number of users, and we'd get a  
whole bunch of stuff for free. Obvious disadvantages are it's not as  
well branded as being 'us' (we'd become an application within an  
existing social networking system), and there may well be practical/ 
technological reasons why we can't do it (though at a first few- 
minute scan of the architecture, i'm not sure there's anything too  
scary in there to stop us).

Apologies if this is a well rehearsed argument that i've missed...

Steve