As you may know, Facebook surpassed MySpace in traffic a while back. New data from Hitwise indicates that the launch of Facebook Connect likely played a major role in this.
The following graph shows a major increase in market share of social networking visits starting with the time when Facebook Connect was launched:
“A clear benefit of Facebook Connect is the ability of the user to use a single portable identity – and most importantly, one password, rather than logging into multiple accounts across the network of websites,” says Hitwise’s Heather Dougherty. “Facebook’s recent purchase of FriendFeed will also help to aggregate this single portable identity across the Internet. Participation from websites in Facebook Connect also has strong implications to appear more often in the search results executed on Facebook resulting from member postings as search becomes a more prevalent activity within this large audience.”
Judge Orders Facebook to Turn Over Source Code
In other Facebook news, the company has reportedly been ordered by a Delaware District Court Judge to turn over all of its source code to Leader Technologies, a company that claims Facebook has infringed on its patent for associating a piece of data with multiple categories. (via Slashdot)
Possible “labs”-like Directory for Facebook Apps?
Jason Kincaid found a link to a possible directory of prototype Facebook apps, which he chalks up to being either a bug or a feature similar to Google’s Gmail labs, which lets users use apps, but makes it clear that they are not finalized products. He says that if it is a bug, it has not been fixed, so the latter option is more likely.
