Custom tags to make Facebook apps faster, more interesting and ubiquitous

January 13, 2009 | Eric Eldon | Comments | |

Facebook is now letting third-party application developers create their own snippets of code, called “custom tags.” These tags can be used to make an application perform better as well to build features from one application into another application. For example, a game app could use these tags to integrate a song from a music application.

Facebook also plans to further develop these tags for Facebook Connect, a service that lets third-party sites do things like let users sign in and comment using their Facebook identities. One day, these sites could embed Facebook applications as widgets, making the sites more valuable using the social identity of Facebook users.

Here’s an example from Facebook about how these tags might be used:

So if you’re an application developer and want to make your application even more content rich — say by including music or news — consider using an available custom tag set. For example, if you’re building a wedding site and want to include a playlist of top wedding songs, you can use the iLike custom tag to embed a playlist of top wedding songs. See below for more information about iLike’s custom tags and other examples.

The custom tags make use of Facebook’s existing proprietary markup language for app development, called FBML — a simple format that the thousands of Facebook app developers are already familiar with. For developers, here’s a custom tags directory that Facebook has created to help get you started.

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About the Author, Eric Eldon

Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.

  • LD8
    "This means users might see faster app load times."

    As a FB app developer I have absolutely no idea how that could possibly be true. Sure, the markup might save a few bytes (and server side) processing, but whomever serves up the custom FBML will still push their own markup to replace what you've saved and their servers will process the cycles your servers would've handled. If anything, the additional load from a third-party provider would INCREASE load times (though probably minimally).
  • LD8, here's what Facebook said in its post:

    "Much like how one FBML tag is a shorthand way to include a lot of markup (think of fb:comments, for example), one custom tag can replace a lot of FBML and HTML content inline. Using custom tags in this way lowers the communication overhead between Facebook and your application’s servers. One custom tag can render a larger amount of content. Instead of sending the full FBML fragment with every request, you can replace it with a custom tag that Facebook will expand when Facebook parses the page."
  • The Elephant in the room

    If you are an Open Source Developer or Content creator (If you are a member of either service you are a content creator) you should not use Facebook.

    By using Facebook you are essentially raising the value of their company and their application Facebook is a closed source content silos that does not allow you to control the content that you create.

    Facebook does not put the content creator/members at the top of their pyramids when thinking about revenue models. Facebook puts their Facebook first above the members and communities that have given them value and revenue.

    If you are a developer you may be able to make some money by creating applications for Facebook ; but I do not believe that Facebook will ever allow your application to eat into their user base or their revenue. Because Facebook is a closed source companies that have the ability to literally cut you off by changing the code/api or by using their proprietary knowledge to build an application that you can not possibly compete with.

    As a coder understand that when you build and extend Facebooks propitiatory platforms that you undermine the longevity of the Open Internet.

    Content owners and Developers do not help closed source companies (Facebook) in their goal of creating another closed source content trap that will extract hundreds of Millions on dollars from their member and developer communities and give nothing back in return.
  • Facebook keeps saying that its long-term plan is to become more and more open. Do you not believe the company?
  • i guess they are getting more open...what do you think ?