Facebook has launched an API for its activity stream that enables third parties to develops programs and services that make it possible for users to interact with their streats without having to visit Facebook.com.

 

With this move, Facebook wants to stir up things in its developer community to fight off rivals MySpace and Twitter.

 

By using the Open Stream API, third-party developers can create apps which users can use to view photos, information from their Facebook account and so on without actually visiting Facebook.com.  

 

The new apps developed this way can display the aforementioned information with desktop and mobile clients and on other Web sites as well.  The Open Stream API could also be used to develop new apps within Facebook itself that could be used to filter or remix the news stream. 

 

For those of you who aren't quite familiar with Facebook, the activity stream is the list of feed items that is displayed on the Facebook home page and which is destined of updates from the user's friends such as what are they doing, what groups have they joined and other similar details. 

 

At the announcement of the Open Stream API, Facebook also underlined that the API is compliant with the new Activity Streams standard (an extension of the Atom feed format). 

 

"Over the last several months, we've been collaborating with the community, hosting meetups at Facebook headquarters, and speaking at industry events about Activity Streams and the open stack," Facebook said in a statement. "We think that working alongside our peers to create an open standard for accessing and consuming streams is the future. We'll continue to make contributions to the standards community and related technologies and are happy to be one of the first companies to implement Activity Streams at scale."