Facebook just revealed a new service, which the company dubs “Facebook Connect,” designed to integrate other sites on the web with its own user-generated content.

The service will enable users of the popular social networking site to log in to partners’ websites with their Facebook ID and be able to see their friends’ activities on that website. The reverse is also true, as your own activities will be visible to your friends as well as be displayed on your profile updates.

According to press, Facebook Connect will at first only partner with a few websites such as City Search, and will then expand to sites like the Discovery Channel, Digg, Geni and the San Francisco Chronicle to name only a few of the sites with whom Facebook are currently holding pow-wows.

This new service will add social networking elements to what may have been rather unsociable websites, increasing their interactivity with their readers. From the users’ viewpoint, it will be much easier to use a single ID to access multiple websites and disseminate information quickly and easily, as opposed to the rather cumbersome method of pasting a link over a chat window.

Privacy concerns will instantly pop up though, when services such as this are concerned. The highly controversial Beacon advertising program introduced by Facebook in 2007 did essentially the same thing as today’s Connect. Beacon, however, raised additional privacy issues, as well as disgust due to issues like a surprise gift being spoiled for a friend by Beacon “updating” the user’s Facebook profile with the item he just purchased from a partnered website.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shows concern for privacy by saying that "Facebook Connect users must understand what's going on and have control over it." Facebook seems to have been more careful when approaching the issue this time, by learning from Beacon’s mistakes and giving users more control over what information is shared.

As far as monetization is concerned, no revenue-sharing system devised for Connect, but in the future partner sites could use your personal information (not without explicit permission from you… of course) to show you targeted ads while you use their services. This solution may be a workaround to the generally observed fact that social networking sites are bad places for advertisers to show up in. An advertisement will look out of place on a page where one’s personal thoughts and feelings are shared with one’s friends. Recent studies confirm this as a fact.

IDC, a research firm, has done a survey recently, revealing that only 57% of advertisements displayed on social networking websites were clicked on, and of those only 11% actually ended up to a final purchase. Facebook has been under heavy pressure during the last few years to get its revenue to match its notoriety and market share.

Facebook has $235 million raised in capital as of last year, and looking for more ways to increase revenue. Connect seems one of the ways this endeavor could have success.