A steady stream of information flows through Facebook everyday just as it does in Twitter. But up until now, one couldn’t access the string of Facebook status updates being posted by people known and unknown, with or without a Facebook account.

But Facebook has recently announced plans to open up its API, so now the information that appears in user home pages and profiles will become available to third party developers who can build new services and applications based on the data being made publicly available. Previously, developers were able to access facebook's own API to build customized Facebook applications using the Facebook markup language (FBML).