Welll, it appears that one month after Facebook asked me, and others, to remove my little cURL ‘hack’ for updating your Facebook Status, Facebook has finally implemented a users.setStatus() method in their API.
I originally posted my code and the ideas surrounding its creation and use on April 20, 2007. Five months later, Facebook decided to lay the hammer down, after many people had already implemented, ported, optimized, and whored my code. Now, one month after that, Facebook has an official API method for updating your own status.
Was this a move to open their platform more and to silence those who believe Facebook’s f8 is more of a ‘closed’ platform when compared to other service providers with APIs, a move to implement something that they obviously forgot about so they would look like less of a loser, or an honest move towards helping the federated status initiative? Either way, I am glad that the API method now exists.
And, as noted by Daniele Muscetta (a new friend of mine, and Facebook F8 Developer), it has already been picked up and implemented in a project that echoes that of my original vision of Twitter->Facebook over at TwitterSweet.
So, good job Facebook… kind of. 