Facebook Connect is Here; It’s Like OpenID for Dummies

in social networking, Web 2.0, myspace, Google, facebook, OpenID, News

Facebook Connect is now open for business, allowing any developer to let users login to their websites using their Facebook credentials. Additionally, other key Facebook features, like your friends list, can now be integrated into third-party applications, which can in turn send data back into Facebook and the News Feed.

If there were an OpenID for Dummies book, its publisher would be Facebook Connect, because for all intents and purposes, it’s the same thing, at least to 99.9% of end users who experience it. For an example of how it works, the new Citysearch beta, which launched a couple weeks ago, allows users to use their Facebook login to write reviews and leave comments. Those actions are then broadcast back to the Facebook News Feed.

That’s a big win for two obvious reasons: (1) you don’t need to register for a Citysearch account, provided you’re one of the 130 million people that now has Facebook, (2) Citysearch gets a ton of free exposure, as Facebook users who leave reviews and comments have those activities broadcast back to their mini-feed.

Now, OpenID works similarly – you can sign-in to third-party websites using credentials from popular services like Yahoo and AIM – but both as a user and a developer, the benefits aren’t as tangible as those being offered by Facebook Connect. The remaining advantage for OpenID is that it doesn’t tether users to one service – since so many companies are now identity providers, just about everyone already has an account somewhere they can use on sites that accept OpenID logins.

But, I don’t think that’s enough to hold back Facebook Connect from being a powerful force in identity management, and a must-add feature for websites with social features. It would seem that a lot of big websites already agree, as Facebook has signed on more than 100 launch partners, including CBS, CNET, CNN, Vimeo, and even My.BarackObama.com. And, according to Facebook, early testing of Connect shows a 50 percent increase in engagement on websites that have implemented it.

That’s not to say Facebook isn’t without competition – MySpace has already launched its own similar effort on a number of websites, while Google Friend Connect, likely not as a matter of coincidence, today opened up its doors for any developer to implement. But with its existing and growing lead in social networking, along with an approach that any end-user can understand, Facebook appears to have a big advantage.

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