Perhaps I'm jumping the gun a bit this morning, but if Facebook announces what I think they'll announce this morning, then we're back.

When I left Microsoft a little more than a year ago, we started off building Facebook applications.  But it didn't take us long to realize that 1) we'd missed the boat on the big growth, 2) FBML was particularly clunky, and 3) not enough data was exposed to make it really interesting.

Then Facebook made the apparently strategic decision to de-emphasize third-party applications, which was the final nail in the coffin for us with Facebook application development.  We did build a few Facebook applications for clients of our consulting business, but nothing for ourselves.

Well, now times have changed.  Facebook has realized its promise from a year ago — with more than 200 million users, you can't ignore it as a developer.  And today, they are likely to announce details on how they are exposing considerably more data through their developer API - a clear response to the popularity of Twitter's API & developer strategy.

It's a very exciting development for us and for the industry.  More to come later as I digest today's announcement.