Facebook Herald

Facebook just announced the next phase of their Facebook Platform called Facebook Connect. The plan is to extend the platform by allowing you to take your identity to third party websites. As an example, I could go over to Digg.com and digg an article and any of my friends that also go ti digg would be able to see what I dug.

This sort of thing seems like a surfing version of the life casting function they added last month. That allowed you to add things like Digg and Flickr feeds to your profile so your friends could see them, but soon your friends will be able to see where you’ve been on the web with out checking into your profile.

Some of the things that Facebook is tauting as features are:

Real Identity: Basically, on all of these third party sites, your real name is going to be how you are represented, not a screen name. This can also carry over your limited profile, your profile picture, groups, friends, and more. This raises the question though, do we want third party sites to know who we are? More to the point, do we want people, on third party sites to know who we are? What kind of access will non-friends have to this information?

Trusted Authentication: This may actually address some of my concerns above. Facebook, through strict TOS policy is pretty much guaranteeing that the third party sites that will be joining this are going to be responsible and your information will be shared in a trusted environment. The user will have total control over the permissions granted; does that include hiding your full name? And, once again, is this a friends only thing?

Friend Access: As much as I am playing Devil’s Advocate a little bit, I really do think that this could be a good idea. If they do do it right, as in only your friends are going to see your presence on the third party sites, these are people you have already green lighted and don’t min if they see your info. This whole “data portability” thing really has a chance to expand the way we connect on the internet, or, at least the way we share information. The third party sites are going to be able to tell you which friends already have accounts on their site.

Dynamic Privacy: It looks like your settings will be following you around the web. Change your profile picture? De-friend someone? The changes will happen on all of the sites that you use with Friend Connect. That means that stalker you de-friended won’t see what articles you just dugg.

Facebook seems incredibly into protecting our privacy as we move around the web. They talk about dedication to trusted partner sites, and “standards for enabling the portability and protection of users’ information.” This service is set to launch in the next few weeks, so keep your eyes open for it. Once it goes live I will have an article up detailing it in the wild. In the mean time, If you want to learn more about bringing Facebook users to your website, application or device, send them an email at: connect@facebook.com.

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Filed under: Facebook Features, News