December 12 - 4:00pm EST   Social network site Facebook today announced the early stages of open access to Facebook Platform, the underpinning for the company's web application service. The company will let its existing platform serve as a reference for other sites and will allow competitors to license the company's proprietary tags and similar code, though the cost if any of a license has yet to be revealed. Expanding the code will let developers writing for Facebook export their web applications to other sites without having to significantly rewrite the code for another platform, the company says. [full story]