Facebook application development entails a very small learning curve. It has its roots in the contemporary Internet markup and scripting technologies. As a matter of fact, if you are a web developer, you only need a few more skills to develop your applications in Facebook. The required front-end skills include XHTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP. Facebook uses its own markup and scripting languages known as FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and FBJS (Facebook Javascript) respectively. For backend, Facebook has its own version of SQL known as FQL (Facebook Query Language).

Other than technical skills, developers have other challenges when it comes to the social networking paradigm. In order to make their applications reach more users, developers have to come up with innovative ideas and marketing strategies to engage their users.

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