Facebook announced that it is opening up its platform to third-party software developers. From hereon, developers can create applications for Facebook users and even allow companies to open retail services inside, get advertisers, and take home everything.

“You can serve ads… or if you don;t want to advertise, you can just sell something. You keep all the revenue,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO said.

The company also announced the debut of Facebook/f8, a platform that allows anyone to build applications for social computing. Beginning tonight night, Facebook said that users will be able to equip their profiles with 65 new services.

The move is seen as Facebook’s attempt to eat into MySpace territory. According to Hitwise, MySpace continued to dominate the social networking category in April 2007, with 79.7 percent of category visits. Following MySpace was Facebook with 11.47 percent of visits and Bebo with 1.28 percent of category visits. U.S. visits to MySpace increased by 70 percent from April 2006 to April 2007, while visits to Facebook were up 126 percent and visits to Bebo up 184 percent in that period.

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3. Bebo opens its API to developers
4. LinkedIn to open their platform to developers?
5. New Fuser Facebook Application enables users to check MySpace messages from within Facebook Profile

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