How well would “Facebook Connect” Connect?

Author: Business Beyond Reality

November 30, 2008: The day Facebook made their big press push for their Facebook Connect service, which was first announced on May 30th, 2008.

Source: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&year=2008&month=5

After the first version of the Facebook API in August 2006, enabling users to share their information with the third party websites and applications they choose and Facebook Platform in May 2007, which allowed third party developers to build rich social applications within Facebook, Facebook Connect, the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to “connect” their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site was announced on May 2008. Facebook Connect will now enable third party websites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook – similar to features available to third party applications today on Facebook. Similair to OpenId (which was adopted by MySpace) third party developers can allow website visitors to login to their website using their Facebook ID. This “Passport” system (much like what Microsoft tried to do) will let members leave comments on third party sites –as well as identify their friends on these sites.

Source: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=108

Many Facebook Connect implementations have launched over the past several weeks. Some of the launch partners include CBS’ TheInsider.com, CNN’s the Forum, and Red Bull. Additionally, many sites have submitted their implementations, and have been approved for launch, including GlobalGrind, GovIt, and IndieGoGo.

Source: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=163

What ‘Facebook Connect’ Means for Corporate Websites

“Facebook Connect will allow corporate websites to allow users to authenticate, interact, and share with their Facebook network –all without leaving the corporate website”, says Jeremiah Owyang, Sr Analyst at Forrester Research: Social Computing who attended SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Facebook f8 Conference, July 23, 2008.

Brands that are already trying to reach the Facebook audience (white collar workers and college students) should plan on experimenting with Facebook Connect as it can bring additional social functionality to corporate websites.

Source: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/07/23/what-facebook-connect-means-for-corporations/

What the third party sites get out of these services

What the third party sites get out of these services: easy sign in for users, particularly new users. They can also use the profile data to help users create accounts at their site with little data input. The activity stream information published on the social networks includes links back to their sites. And one of the most interesting features, for Facebook Connect partners: sites can request friend lists from Facebook to help them make more connections on their own services.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113002453.html

Battle for partners:

The battle for partners is intense. MySpace announced Twitter as a launch partner, but rumor is that Twitter is actually integrating with Facebook first . MySpace also announced Yahoo and eBay as launch partners. To date, though, they’ve only launched with Flixster and Eventful.

This is just one more in a trend: OpenID now on MySpace, Google Friend Connect, LinkedIn’s ties with Businessweek and NYT are all examples of our social graphs (relationships) leaving the social network and spreading to third party sites.

Also, White label social network vendors (community platforms) should be thinking about how to integrate all of the above.