Facebook has made some changes to their Graph API that has led Microsoft to announce that many of its popular applications will no longer connect to Facebook to exchange data. The Graph API provided by Facebook as a method of sending or receiving information traces its lineage to its original release in April 2010. Facebook describes it as “... a low-level HTTP-based API that you can use to query data, post new stories, manage ads, upload photos and a variety of other tasks...”.
Microsoft uses this API, which it calls Facebook Connect, in numerous applications that it offers on Windows and Windows Phone. This list includes Outlook.com, Windows 8.x apps, OneDrive, and Office 365. According to Microsoft any existing Facebook information contained in the Microsoft apps will remain, but changes will no longer synch.
Microsoft has provided a full list of the applications and services affected:
- Outlook.com Contacts
- Outlook.com, Windows , Windows Phone and Office 365 Calendar sync
- Windows 8.1 People app
- Windows 8 People app
- Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 Calendar app
- Windows 8 Photo Gallery and Movie Maker
- Windows 8 Photos App
- Windows Phone 7 and 8 People app
- Windows Phone 7 and 8 OneDrive
- Windows Phone 7 and 8 Photos
- Windows Live Essentials Calendar and Contacts
- OneDrive Online
- Outlook Social Connector in Outlook 2013
- Office 365 Outlook Web App
Looking at the changelog for Graph API, there haven’t been any recent changes to the API, with the latest version (2.3) being released March 25, 2015. The oldest active version, 2.0, is still scheduled to be supported until August 7, 2016 so it is not clear what exact changes caused Microsoft to drop support at this time. Users can still manually share data (by saving photos locally and then upload them to Facebook) and access Facebook via its website but those methods are of course less streamlined.
