Facebook, often accused of maintaining a walled-garden of content, is taking a step toward staying relevant to, and possibly leading, the next phase of the social Web with its data portability solution, Facebook Connect.
The company has confirmed that, over the next few weeks, Connect functionality will be adopted by partners including Digg, Hulu, Discovery Channel, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Geni -- among others.
Essentially what this means is Facebook users can port their data and activity between Facebook and participating sites and also see and share in their friends' activity without having to maintain separate social graphs and log-ins for each site they use. Google and MySpace have both unveiled similar solutions (called Friend Connect and Data Availability, respectively).
Web 2.0 gurus describe the next phase of the Web as fully social. In other words, social networking will not be a destination activity, it will be part of everything we do and every site we use. For you paranoids out there, think of it as your friends and coworkers digitized and living in your pocket... and eating all of your hard candy. (Drats!)
"I think [Facebook is] really good at getting the market first. They've been focused 1000 percent on the Facebook Connect piece for the last several months and they've delivered a fantastic solution. That's what people want," says Scott Kveton, chairman of the OpenID Foundation. Kveton said
earlier this year, at the Inverge conference, that social networking is
"just a feature," and he says this move by Facebook
brings us closer to that realization.
"Facebook will be driven to be more open because of MySpace and because of Google and because of Yahoo. At the end of the day, I'm excited to see a lot of players in this and excited to see Facebook pushing the envelope."
Of course, enabling data portability isn't simply an act of altruism: The key for the social networks is to keep users on their sites. Going forward, some say, this will mean opening up, tearing down the walls, and looping in more partner sites before competitors can. If users comply (i.e., if the demand for and understanding of data portability extends further than the halls of Silicon Valley), this will give sites like Facebook access to more user data, which they can hope to market.
For Facebook, however, it's important that, in the midst of opening up, it avoids the fatal Beacon mistake of yesteryear -- whereby it completely betrayed user privacy by broadcasting their Web activity on Facebook without asking first. Whoops.
But, according to Kveton, privacy won't be a big issue where data portability and Facebook Connect are concerned.
"I don't know if it's privacy as much as it's going to be security," he says. "People will go, 'Well, I don't have privacy anyway, so it's not a big deal to me.' "
I think this move for Facebook will be a big success. for the site. Already, Facebook is one of the fastest growing social networks that is popular with people of all ages from the tweens to folks in their 50s and 60s. Opening up the "walled garden" will allow even more people to get in on the fun of social networking, which can be a great self-promoting medium. Personally, I'm looking forward to connecting my blog and other accounts. It's like a one-stop-shop, which is totally convenient.
Exactly GajaKannan. Sounds like "the lord of the Connects... One Connect to rule them all...". Ever have to choose between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, or Mac and PC, or iPhone 3G and G1 Phone... Indeed, everyone wants a piece of the pie and wants everyone else to be compatible with theirs. But I have a feeling neither Facebook nor Google is interested in having a "Mother of All Connects" that sits on top of their Connect. I think it's more likely to be exclusive list of partner sites for either Facebook Connect or Google's Friend Connect but not both (if there's Coke, there's no Pepsi, and vise versa...so to speak).
Say, I have a blog at blogger.com and I want to add a social networking feature using Facebook Connect at my blog so that all my friends from Facebook can log in to my blog site and go to the friend-only area and can do whatever social networking activities at my site that they would normally do at the Facebook main site. The only slight issue is blogger.com belongs to Facebook's rival, Google, and so I would have to use Friend Connect if I want to go on with my blogspot, but Facebook has since banned Friend Connect from accessing its data (supposed to be my data)...meanwhile, as "my data" being ported from site to site, I just have to say goodbye to my online privacy...
Raza, if you could surf other sites without problems (at more or less expected speed), then it's probably a problem with Facebook. I've noticed too that the site is often very slow at login - this may be due to its massive traffics in general, and/or things that it needs to load on the page. But after logged on for a while, things become faster on Facebook.
It is indeed an interesting move on the part of Facebook. Recently, I acknowledged the need of such a feature when I wanted to share an order that I placed on Amazon with one of my friends. Apparently Amazon does not have it
But I am experiencing some delay whenever I go to facebook these days. Do not know whether it is a problem with my connection or the Facebook
Viboons, Funny you brought up creating one more data portability standards in the already available standards. Creating a "Mother of All Connects" that connects facebook connect to google connect to myspace data availability, etc., This sounds like enterprise SOA/Integration patterns that most of the enterprises have today. Each LOB has a Enterprise Service Bus that talks among their applications/departments and to connect different departments they create another ESB that sits on top of ESBs. I guess everyone wants a piece of the pie
Ok, Facebook Connect will be more or less similar to Google's Friend Connect, but I just can't figure out why they couldn't come up with a "different" name (instead of just copying Friend Connect,... the two even have the same abbreviation, i.e. FC) - so much for the creativity of Facebook.
So, it sounds like the "Connect" or data portability feature is mostly (if not all) about getting exclusive with as many "household-name" partner sites as possible. What happens if users want to be able to "connect" the Friend Connect and Facebook Connect together at a site? - perhaps, they need a feature called "Team of Rivals" Connect...?
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