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What is Facebook Connect?

Should you be integrating Facebook Connect in your site?

We get asked about Facebook Connect all the time and many people don't fully understand what it is and how it works.

Pallasart can implement these services to help their customers connect and share with their Facebook friends on and off of Facebook and increase engagement for customer websites.

Originally unveiled during Facebook’s developer conference, F8, in July 2008, Facebook Connect became generally available in December 2008. According to an article from The New York Times, "Some say the services are representative of surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet companies (including Facebook, Google, MySpace and Twitter) all share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.

Since launching Facebook Connect, the company has rolled out additional features related to the services some of which include: Translations for Connect;Facebook Connect Wizard and Facebook Connect for the Mobile Web.

The following is from an article published by MIT in January 2011.  To read the complete article go here.

"Facebook's identity system might very well supply something that VeriSign, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google have all struggled to offer: a single "driver's license" for the Internet. (This leaves aside the question of whether it's a good thing for one company to hold such a position of power.)

A unique combination of factors makes Facebook well suited to being the repository for people's identities on the Internet. Unlike many popular websites, it requires users to register and log in. And Facebook's terms of servicerequire that "users provide their real names and information"—indeed, Facebook has terminated accounts that were created with seemingly fake names or for fictional characters. Since Facebook users invest their accounts with a tremendous amount of durable personal content—including photographs, contact information, and connections to their social network—they are likely to keep a long-term relationship with the site.

This persistence of real identity puts Facebook in a position to solve one of the most pressing problems on the Internet today—the proliferation of user names and passwords.

Contrary to today's practice, there is no reason for most websites to force their users to create usernames and passwords. Most websites don't need or even want or need to manage the identities of their users—they simply want a way to reliably identify their users over time. Media websites, for instance, want to be able to attribute comments and limit spam. Personal-finance websites want to give users a way to monitor highly personal information securely—for example, a portfolio of stocks that the user might enter."

Facebook Connect can be a powerful way to add value to your website.  If you would like to learn more about Facbook Conect or how it might be implemened in your website give us a call at 512 469-7454.

Bob Atchison

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