On the heels of MySpace’s Data Portability announcement, Facebook has unveiled Facebook Connect, which the social networking site is calling “the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to ‘connect’ their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site.”
Facebook Connect will allow users to drag their profile and/or applications to any third party website and interlink with that website. Facebook uses Digg.com as an example. Digg users who also use Facebook will be able to keep track of the stories their friends had dugg or commented on.
This feature is extended on other websites in a similar way, as when users carry their profile somewhere else, they’ll also carry their friends list. Facebook Connect will show them which friends are also active on another site.
Developers who wish to add social content on their site will be able to incorporate Facebook Connect and do so with what Facebook calls “trusted authentication,” which allows users to authenticate their account. It helps that Facebookers are expected to use their real names as identities. Of course, they’ll have to watch those previously anonymous comments.
If privacy becomes an issue (again) on Facebook, the company says that along with their profiles users also take their privacy settings. So what goes, or doesn’t go, on Facebook stays the same—even if Facebookers in the past have had trouble with the “privacy in public” concept.
