Facebook Connect: Coming Soon to a Site Near You?
Facebook Connect - the service that allows developers to access Facebook data from outside of the Facebook chrome - has been met with both cautious optimism and healthy skepticism. And with good reason. The service holds the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with social sites the Web over. At the same time, it gives Facebook access to a great deal of information about how users interact with other social sites.
To date, the sites allowed to use Facebook Connect have been few and far between. But that may soon change, given today's announcement that Facebook is accepting more developer submissions.
Like its chief competitor Google Friend Connect and more recent entrant Yahoo! Open Strategy, Facebook Connect offers developers access to a number of baked-in features that can both save development time and enhance the Facebook experience for users by leveraging data that already exists within Facebook.
ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez explained the offering this way:
"Through the seamless Facebook Connect integration, sites can access your Facebook account details and friend graph and move that data back and forth between their site and Facebook. For example, people commenting on a blog using the Moveable Type platform will be able to login via Facebook Connect."
How long until we see more sites?
Another similarity between Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect? Both services have put developers in a "hurry up and wait" stance, as the features have only been accessible to a select few.
This announcement, however, promises to increase the number of sites leveraging the platform, so long as those sites comply with Facebook Connect policies.
But how many sites and when those sites will be live with Facebook Connect are anyone's guess.
Like the Apple App Store, Android Market, and other controlled offerings, the exclusivity surrounding Facebook Connect carries with it a certain amount of prestige. No doubt there are any number of developers who have already applied and are champing at the bit to be included in the next round of approved sites.
While it will be interesting to see how many developers choose to submit sites for inclusion, it will be even more interesting to see whom Facebook chooses to approve.
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This is part of the MS - FaceBook alliance! Improving your lives people!
You can experience Facebook Connect at these sites
http://www.GovIt.com :)
http://www.theinsider.com/
http://connect.redbullusa.com/
http://globalgrind.com/
http://www.indiegogo.com/
There is noting "Open" about "Open" Social. It can only been seen for what it is; a plan by Facebook to continue to raise their revenue and values on backs of other sites content and members.
Developers and content creators of the world, it is time to free yourselves from the share cropping model that is web 2.0.
What will facebook give back to the developer community for their efforts ?
Will face book share a percentage of the value that is created in their company with the developers and content creators that have added the most value.
The value of that content creators and the developers add is something that is measurable. I doubt Microsoft invested close to a billion dollars in face book for their technology.
How does developing for face book or integrating "Open" Social help anyone but facebook ?
Why does developing for face book involve using non standard development methods when there are well known open source standards that could be used ? Because facebook like Microsoft and Google wants to be the standard and they want you to develop for their platform so that you can help them become the standard. I think we have seen this before; and we are still living with the repercussions.
The policy sucks, especially these...
2. When Facebook Connect is used to allow a user to "sign in" or authenticate with your website, the Facebook Connect option must be presented at least as prominently as the most prominent of any other sign in or authentication method on your site, and not as a secondary option.
6. If you have an application on Facebook and a website that implements Facebook Connect, the user will need to explicitly connect on your website before your website can use their information. However, once the user has both authorized the application and connected to your website, you can link the information.
That is a good new feature for facebook.
Ah ! Really ? But what is all about approve & reject ?
Is this not for everybody ? Still open is little bit close... :)
Anyways - intuitive is good but approach is something need to be changed.
That is a good new feature for facebook.
izolasyon
This. Is. A. Great. Idea.
Don't see why social groups - friends, family, business contacts - need to be limited by platform-specific sites such as Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.
Now if we can just come up with a user-friendly cross-site social networking platform, designed possibly by Jakob Nielsen, that would be class.
2Pac on Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B37wW9CGWyY
just another step
I don't know if this will be a step forward or a step backward for Facebook. This further provides companies a way to research their target audiences and how people connect through different social sites. However, this is provides less privacy for Facebook users. Furthermore, the whole concept of Facebook Connect still seems a bit unclear, however since I use Twitter and Digg quick frequently I suppose this new application may be useful.
One step in a good direction, one not. On the one hand leveraging social graph data has potential positive effects for third party sites to drive traffic and potentially sales as you leverage graph data to influence product merchandising etc. On the other hand, this 'data portability' is really nothing more than data access granted by FB, who for all intense and purposes wants to be the storage locker for personal data (data war, this is what we are really talking about) instead of the more ideal paradigm in which graph data has been decentralized through the creation of microformats for expressing identity and relationships, and that data lives in the Cloud...and eventually this decentralized data becomes the core of a VRM platform....
I am actually looking forward to using Facebook connect on a number of sites and believe it will be a valuable tool for promoting your site on Facebook. I wrote a blog post about why other sites should be using it and how to implement it. Maybe some people will find it useful if they are thinking about implementing FB connect?
http://www.chewie.co.uk/general/facebook-connect-why-and-how-to-use-it-on-your-website/
Be sure to check out IndieGoGo- It is a film financing site that allows filmmakers to raise money online from fans. The relationship with Facebook Connect will definitely help filmmakers reach out and gather more support for the films that they are making.
www.indiegogo.com
I can see both sides of this. I've yet to use it on a site, but ideally I would like to find something that is open across several sites and use that.
Today I have a separate world for each of my social networks: family-mingle, facebook, linkedin etc, I guess it won't be long until a uniform platform will rize for all networks.
facebook a good step forward ++
BOOOOORRRRRRRINGGGG
people who use facebook really need to get a fucking life
We'll keep an eye on this and the others but will wait until things settle down a bit before integrating with this or something similar.
That's cool, but also kind of scary to think about.