stef's posterous

Created in Birmingham on Facebook

I've been doing some research for a project that I'm working on at the moment that will rely on Facebook's new system that allows people develop their own 'applications'. You may have seen some of these - usually involving throwing pigs at eachother, trying to bite oneanother in some kind of lycanthropic fantasy involving ninjas or in the form of little bits of "that's too much information, dude" revelations... all of this being 'virtual' of course. So, as a first attempt to learn the ropes in a situation that may be a little more forgiving than the actual release of a real live application for a real live client, I decided to attempt something simple. A cool little application that will display all of the latest blog posts that Pete Ashton puts together for Created in Birmingham. This is timely I think. I've noticed a strange phenomenon recently. I am having a conversation with someone and they randomly drop in some information about me that I am sure I have not told them directly. It goes like this: "So are you better now?" "Huh? Oh - yes, thanks. You heard about that." (Confused look) "And Imogen's nearly walking? That's great!" "Uh.... yeah...." (Looking blanker) "And that RTS Award thing is great - when's the ceremony? Tuesday isn't it? Bet you're really looking forward to that!" ".... Uh.... yeah I am... Heh." (Are you stalking me?) ... "Okay great then - nice bumping into you." "Yeah - you too..." (Huh?!?!) The power of  Facebook - inverting the conversational flow by letting everyone know what you're up to via Status updates! It's quite cool when you think about it, but it certainly started confusing me a little this week. Aaanyway. I digress. So I thought, seeing as everyone I know seems to be on Facebook now, yet most of those people don't yet have RSS readers wouldn't it just make sense to make a little something that you can put on your profile page that lists all the latest stuff that Pete's been writing about. So I made it. Go ahead add it yourself on the Created in Birmingham Facebook application page. I must strees I didn't ask Pete about this in advance - it just happened through a research process, so it's very much a case of 'here's a thing I did - is it useful?'. I've had a few interesting ideas around this. How about some way to click a 'share' button so you can send interesting stuff from the site to other  people? How about a handy 'what's on this week in Birmingham' app? How about a box that lets you quickly add an event or a story for inclusion in a bunch feeds so that people can find out about what's going on? Facebook could prove pretty useful in getting people communicating and finding out about stuff in the city. I'd like to know if you find the app useful though - I'm sure there's lots more to be done along these lines. A nod to Jon Bounds at UpYerBrum for giving me the idea...