I just got back from a meeting of the SF Drupal Users Group (my first). One of the presentations was on Drupal for Facebook, a series of modules that enable various kinds of Drupal integration with Facebook. You can use Facebook Connect (basically use Facebook authentication for your own site). You can embed an entire Drupal site into a Facebook application and have it exist there and be interfaced with there. I chatted with someone developing an arts site for at-risk youth in Oakland, and his thinking was that many young people interface with each other over the internet almost entirely through Facebook and Myspace, and so making adding content to his site via Facebook might streamline things for his contributors. You can also do milder versions of both of these concepts; have a primarily Facebook-based application that draws on a Drupal site for some content, or have pieces of Facebook-aware information on the Drupal side.
I remember about a year ago or so writing about how I was using this site less in favor of Facebook. I never have had great pretensions or ambitions for my internet presence; it's basically a place for people who already know me to catch up on things I'm thinking about, when I remember to post about them. Which, Facebook does for me, in a much more sophisticated and nuanced manner. Basically if you're my friend you're likely on Facebook and you likely keep up with me, as well as anyone keeps up with me, via Facebook.
But, I have no control over how Facebook presents my information to the world. And, it's a walled garden; Facebook pages can be indexed but they're much harder to get to and navigate if you're not friended to me. And, I don't really like that Facebook owns my content, and that the clever thing I said is stuck there.
So, maybe some sort of Facebook/Drupal hybrid is in order, with the content in each places being reflected in the other. drupalforfacebook.org is essentially that; a proof-of-concept site that the author of the module has put up. Content gets reflected in both directions. You can administer the Drupal site through a facebook page, which was a bit of a mind twister.
Anyway, hmmm. It looks like FB for Drupal (or vice versa) is easy enough to set up. Random project for this evening. But first, some cookies and milk...
