Facebook Connect, announced back in May, was opened to the
public Thursday, allowing its 130-million strong user base to interconnect with
multiple desktop apps, websites and mobile devices.
The service allows members to use their Facebook credentials
to login to several partner sites which have initially agreed to take part in
the program. The road leading up to this moment had started on Facebook’s
developer blog, where the company announced it wanted to create a service
similar to OpenID. It was a long road however, with months of testing done.
''We opened Facebook Platform in 2007 to enable hundreds of
thousands of developers to create meaningful social experiences for users on
Facebook.com,'' Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, said in a
statement. ''With today's launch of Facebook Connect, we're extending that
power to millions of entrepreneurs and developers, transforming the Web into a
more social place where Facebook's users can engage in trusted social
experiences with their friends.''
Facebook Connect intends to bring features to users that
integrate their online experience, and eliminate the annoyance of creating
multiple IDs for different web sites.
Trusted Authentication lets users log into partners’ web
sites with Facebook accounts. Real Identity also brings users’ personal
information across web sites partaking in the program. Thirdly, there is
Dynamic Privacy, which is designed to keep users in control of their own
information securely, choosing which sites they connect with and show which
social actions are shared to the Facebook News Feed. This last measure is
intended to prevent another Beacon
fiasco.
Social distribution offers the (scary?) outlook of a unified
web identity with these identities being tracked. Logging into Facebook and
being active on a partner site will share the actions a user takes on said
sites back to Facebook.
Given, social networking is all about interacting with other
people and sharing videos articles and other actions may change the way people
interact online, perhaps for the better.
What the partner sites get out of the deal is a feature
called Increased Engagement. This component of the Connect service shares users’
personal interest with the partner site which they’ve used.
If a user watches, say, Hulu – one of the partner sites –
and has “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” applications or notes on their
Facebook page, Hulu will be notified and once a user logs in, bring up the
latest episode from the show. The ads will thus be highly targeted to persons
already interested. That way they’re more likely to generate leads; this makes
the advertisers happy and the revenue increasing.
The fact that activity on partner sites is reported back to
their Facebook page is bound to also increase exposure for partner sites, as
the user’s friends see their links.
Facebook seems to be determined to create a new ecosystem of
online interactivity, and as long as the company doesn’t let third-party sites
become too intrusive, it may become a feature well-appreciated by users.
Partners will appreciate their advertising cash and extended web traffic as
well.