Facebook wants you to build your applications targeted to students and alums on its platform

I’ve already written a lot about the possibilities offered by the Facebook API for our institutions.

And, it seems that it is precisely the direction where Mark Zuckenberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, wants to lead his company.

The announcement was made at F8, a big event in San Francisco last Thursday (I know it seems like everything happened at the end of last week – weird, just before the big holiday weekend) and reported in a PDF press release available on Facebook:

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook f8 Event, May 24, 2007 — Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg today unveiled Facebook Platform, calling on all developers to build the next generation of applications with deep integration into Facebook, distribution across its “social graph” and an opportunity to build new businesses.

“Until now, social networks have been closed platforms.Today, we’re going to end that,” Zuckerberg told an audience of more than 750 developers and partners. “With this evolution of Facebook Platform, any developer worldwide can build full social applications on top of the social graph, inside of Facebook.”

So, what does it mean for our institutions?

A window of opportunity to integrate our recruiting and advancement initiatives with the social networking website.

I’m also pretty sure it won’t be long before a start-up decides to create an application allowing you to raise money for your annual fund or capital campaigns among your younger alums using Facebook.

So, why not create this application for your institution and then license it to others?