In May, Google announced a new initiative called Friend Connect that enables site owners to add social media to their websites, and allows internet users to connect their social accounts more seamlessly. But while Facebook was initally part of the effort, later they banned Google's Friend Connect from their site, citing issues with privacy and the redistribution of user data.
Instead of waiting for Google to comply, Facebook has announced their own initiative: Facebook Connect. It's designed to do basically be a FriendFeed - to aggregate information from users' various profiles on numerous social sites in order to view it all in one place. Here's the details of what to expect:
- Trusted Authentication - easily authenticate into partner sites using your Facebook account
- Real Identity - leverage your real identity across the Web in a trusted environment
- Friend Linking - take your friends with them wherever they go, enabling trusted social context anywhere on the Web
- Dynamic Privacy - assurance that the same privacy settings users have set up on Facebook will follow them wherever they decide to login throughout the Web
- Social Distribution - share actions on partner sites with your friends back on Facebook through feeds
Straight out of the gate, the following sites will utilize Facebook Connect:
Digg
Citysearch
Twitter
Seesmic (online video conversation tool)
Six Apart (blog publishing platform)
Hulu
CBS.com
CNET
CollegeHumor
Disney-ABC
Evite
Flock (social media browser developed on Firefox)
Kongregate
Loopt (new social network for iPhone)
Plaxo
Radar
Red Bull
Socialthing! (think FriendFeed)
StumbleUpon
The Insider
Uber
Vimeo
Xobni
What do you think of Facebook Connect? Let us know in the comments!
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