Interact with Your Stream Anywhere

от Justin Bishop 27 април 2009 г. в 09:35

UPDATE on Monday, April 27: The Facebook Desktop for Adobe AIR application is now available. You can install it here. Note: You must have Adobe AIR installed for the application to work. You can download Adobe AIR for free here.

When you want to stay updated with your friends and other connections on Facebook, you can log into your home page to see a running timeline, or stream, of the information they're sharing. The more they share, the more you see in the stream and the more you learn about your connections. Starting today, you have the option to access that same stream outside of Facebook.com.

Now, you'll be able to view your stream and publish information into it from places you never could before — like your desktop computer or your mobile phone. Your stream will appear just as it does on Facebook.com and maintain the same privacy settings. We believe that the ability to see more and more of what is happening around you will lead to greater openness and transparency.

To make this work, we released new technology for developers so they can offer this option to you on other websites and applications. We work closely with third-party developers to enable intriguing and meaningful experiences both on and off Facebook.com. Since we launched Facebook Platform in 2007, developers have created 10s of thousands of applications to help you connect and share with your friends in interesting ways — whether by playing a social game, discovering new books or creating group greeting cards.

Last year, we announced Facebook Connect to make it easy for you to take your online identity with you across the Web and share what you do online with your friends back on Facebook by publishing your actions to the stream. Today's announcement is an extension of that by making it easy for you to interact with your stream from anywhere.

We've already worked with a few developers to build some of these new experiences for you to try out, and we've created one ourselves, as well. Beginning later today, you'll be able to find these and future applications in the Facebook Application Directory under "For Your Desktop."

For instance, you'll be able to install Facebook Desktop for Adobe AIR and connect using your Facebook account.

Then, you'll receive two prompts: the first to give permission for the application to access your News Feed and Wall and the second to give permission to publish posts and comments.

From there, you'll be able to interact with your stream just as you would on Facebook but directly from your desktop rather than through a browser. You'll be able to do all the same things you would normally do on Facebook, including view your friends' content and share information through the Publisher. You can even "Like" and comment on your friends' stories directly from your desktop.

Be sure to also check out Seesmic's desktop application, which includes your stream from Facebook and adds feeds from other websites, too.

In the coming months, you'll be able to interact with your stream on even more websites and through more applications, in ways we're only beginning to imagine.

Justin, an engineer at Facebook, is getting his friends' latest updates and sharing information, all from his desktop.