Self-styled "corporate geek" and head Facebooker Mark Zuckerberg has been on a mission to extend the image of his "platform" (or is it just a website?) for some time now with software application development initiatives designed to lure in the programming cognoscenti.
Zuckerberg wants to make it easier for coders to build apps on Facebook by providing back-end hosting tools that will enable third-party apps to connect to the wider community.
The recently staged Facebook Parse Developer Day was specifically targeted at so-termed third-party app developers. Parse itself is a cloud services firm that Facebook acquired to help provide a hosted back-end infrastructure for programmers to build its mobile application upon.
NOTE: Facebook already provides tools designed to guide developers into the process of connecting with the data that exits upon the social network itself — this plan is hoped to do more than that.
"What Facebook is trying to do with Parse is to give developers new tools to build and grow their apps," said Zuckerberg.
So with more than 1 billion active users on Facebook, Zuckerberg is saying that programmers should be able to focus more on the front-end application user experience and less on aspects including server management, services connection management, and building push notifications — although these functions will indeed remain crucial.
The analytics tools available through the Parse division will enable programmers to monitor various application attributes and activities such as whether their software creation is enjoying more user traction and interest on Android or iOS, or even whether certain human demographics are attracted to an app and therefore spending more money within the app than others.
