Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life. Whether you want to or not.

This was so powerful with people all over the world when I first posted it, however interest has trailed off significantly and continuously over time. I felt the need to re-post it. Now I’m not paranoid about online personas for I know that whatever is online is open like sending a public message for all to see. However many are not aware how and what is said on Facebook is open and available for all to see friend or foe and the Facebook API facilitates it.

Program authors Will Moffat and Peter Burns say the wrote this program because Openbook draws attention to the information Facebook makes public about its users via its search API.

What’s an API?

I like the way Chris Beach, Scala/Java developer describes it better than Wikipedia. She puts it this way:

An API (Application Programming Interface) is best thought of as a contract provided by one piece of computer software to another.

It’s important to note that pieces of software can interact with or without an API.

For example:

Without API:
An app finds the current weather in London by opening http://www.weather.com/and reading the webpage like a human does, interpreting the content.

With API:
An app finds the current weather in London by sending a message to theweather.com API (in a structured format like JSON). The weather.com API then replies with a structured response.

With an API, the exact structure of request and response is documented upfront byweather.com, and is likely to remain constant, regardless of whether the website changes its look and feel for human visitors.

Without an API, my app relies on the website never changing its look. If it does, my app may stop working because it can’t parse (understand) the webpage anymore. Computers are only as smart as the software you write.

So, the example with API is preferable because it’s more robust. I know that my app will continue to work with the weather.com API, regardless of whether weather.comchanges its website.

So check out and see what information Facebook makes public about its users via its search API.