Facebook launches Facebook platform In a massive developer evnt in San Francisco, Facebook officially launched Facebook Platform. A number of third party applications were also announced, including Microsoft, Amazon, Slide, RockYou, Box.net, Red Bull, Washington Post, Project Agape, Prosper, Snapvine, iLike, PicksPal, Digg, Plum and others. Seventy companies in total are currently developing applicaitons. Facebook is giving an unprecedented amount of access to developers. The API would allow, for example, a third party to recreate Facebook Photos, the most used photo application on the web. Users could then remove the default Facebook Photos and install the third party version instead. Applications can serve their own ads and/or conduct transactions with users. Ads can basically be shown anywhere that Microsoft ads are not currently shown. There will be a special applications area on Facebook where users can browse and add third party apps. But there is also a crucial viral component - when a friend adds an application, it is noted in their news stream on their profile. Clicking on the item brings you to the app, where you can add and/or interact with it yourself. Users will also be adding applications to their site, where others can click and add it to their own profile. The apps will essentially look like any other Facebook application. The payoff is two way. Not only do developers get deep access to Facebook’s twenty million users, Facebook also becomes a rich platform for third party applications. Facebook’s strategy is almost the polar opposite from MySpace. While MySpace frets over third party widgets, alternatively shutting them down or acquiring them, Facebook is now opening up its core functions to all outside developers.

IPv4 unallocated addresses to be exhausted by 2010 The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) published a resolution that its Board of Trustees had passed on IP number availability. The resolution says that since IPv4 addresses are running out, ARIN should take any and all measures necessary to assure veracity of applications to ARIN for IPv4 numbering resources and encourage migration to IPv6 numbering resources where possible. People occasionally provide fraudulent information to ARIN to obtain address space, and as the amount of IPv4 space remaining decreases, this could happen more often. Therefore, the Board of Trustees wants ARIN staff to focus on preventing registration fraud. Most people and organisations connected to the Internet, be they consumers, ISPs, or content companies, are much more interested in what’s in their best interests. By and large, they’re happy to stick with IPv4. Despite the best efforts of organizations like ARIN, the simple fact is that, compared to IPv4, IPv6 gives you access to very little content and very few users. So far, nobody has been able to get past this issue, although the IPv6 experiment proposes to change this by giving away free access to “10 gigabytes of the most popular ‘adult entertainment,’” but only over IPv6. According to ARIN’s statistics, 19 percent of the IPv4 address space is still available, with 13 percent unavailable and 68 percent “allocated.” The group is reluctant to make predictions on when the supply of IPv4 addresses will run out, choosing instead to monitor distribution and consumption trends so that others can do the predicting. It’s certainly possible that the remaining 48 blocks of 16.78 million IPv4 addresses in the global pool will be used up by 2010. However, ARIN and its counterparts across the globe each hold about two years’ worth of address space to allow for day-to-day operation. This brings the total amount of free address space to the equivalent of 72 blocks. In both 2005 and 2006 ten of those blocks were used up, but so far this year, the rate of usage seems to be increasing somewhat.