Lately, we’ve been seeing blog platforms making moves to become more social. Movable Type started incorporating the ability to set up social networks apart from the Facebook Connect plugin that is available. Blogger discussed adding new features including integrating Google Friend Connect into it.
Apparently the Facebook Connect WordPress plugin has now leaked. Though still in beta mode, it would allow Facebook members to connect with one another via comments on WordPress blogs. This is not unlike what Movable Type has done.
“The difference with the Facebook WordPress plugin is that the WordPress plugin is an internal Facebook project,” writes Nick O’Neill at AllFacebook – the Unofficial Facebook Blog. “This also means that Facebook wants to be able to own the comments on your site. Anytime you enable users to login via Facebook, you won’t have access to their email address, unlike Disqus and native WordPress comments. That would probably be my greatest complaint.”
Facebook did contact O’Neill and said that it was not an official Facebook project, so I guess it is still up in the air when it comes to that. With the Movable Type version, Facebook users who visit Movable Type sites can sign in to their Facebook accounts without creating a new one. Profile pictures and names can be displayed, and friends updated when you “participate on the web.”
I’m assuming that the WordPress version will serve basically the same purposes. There’s no word on when it will be released to the public. Facebook made O’Neill remove it, and probably have had others do the same.
