Facebook Responds To MySpace With Facebook Connect

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1. John Doe
   

   May 9th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

   Glad you are making up for the lack of FB stories these past few days

2. Stephanie
   

   May 9th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

   Pretty clever of Facebook. I don’t know that I’d bother personally, although I can see where it could give one a head start in building a profile. But at the same time, I don’t necessarily want to be interacting with exactly the same people everywhere. Just have to see how flexible it is.

3. James Carlos
   

   May 9th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

   Wow, that was a quick response to MySpace… I love data, bring it on!

4. Josh O
   

   May 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

   “Network Pages will be discontinued soon

   Facebook will soon be removing Network Pages from the site. Please keep this in mind when communicating with others on the Wall and on the discussion board. You can use Groups to connect with the people around you.”

   Does anybody else find that odd? Go visit a Facebook network page… They are doing a lot of weird stuff lately, not sure what it all means…

5. Mos
   

   May 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

   Wow, I didn’t expect this announcement so fast. I’m really enjoying the competition.

6. Stanton
   

   May 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

   Oh thank God. I’m tired of having to rebuild my social network every few months on yet another platform. I sincerely hope they have a decent list of partners at launch.

   This could be totally game changing if done correctly.

7. Christian Flickinger
   

   May 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

   Interesting. What’s the over/under that the privacy isn’t bullet-proof just yet and everyone’s data gets leaked?

8. Edial
   

   May 9th, 2008 at 12:22 pm

   I am still missing distributed data storage of our own personal information, that would be real good news.

9. leo
   

   May 9th, 2008 at 12:22 pm

   While face book rules, I am not sure we are ready to commit only to facebook as the main networking site.

10. Chris Saad
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    We’ve not heard anything about it at the DataPortability project - are they using open standards? I know that MySpace’s data will be using open standards - particularly Microformats and OAuth to do the work - that’s what makes it so special.

11. Kaliya, Identity Woman
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    What is proposed above is not open standards but lock-in for the Facebook platform to be managing all your contacts and permissions. Open Standards are needed and actually avaliable for use so that people can do this on what ever platform they trust as their ‘home base’ - hopefully now this is all happening the open standards that can do this will get some attention - XRDS along with XRI & XDI - they are at OASIS and provide service discovery (XRDS) fine grained addressability of data along (XRI) with access control (XDI). They are not ‘just standards’ but have been implemented by ooTao http://www.ootao.com and a network of partners for a large international women’s network.

    All of this of course makes for an even more interesting conversation next Thursday at the 2nd Data Sharing Summit on Thursday. http://www.datasharingsummit.com

12. Aidan
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    I think this is a good idea.

    1) I use facebook.
    2) I hate being alone.
    3) Now my friends are with me where ever i go.

    Seems like a win to me.

13. Wayne Smallman
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Not exactly earth-shattering — arguably predictable, really — but required and shrewd, none the less.

    It’s the execution Facebook’ll be judged on, so let’s see what it’s all about.

    I can see the slogan now: Facebook is anywhere you are.

    And so will their platform, presumably…

14. Mark
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    This has potentially far reaching implications for app developers.

    Done properly, this makes the transition from app to the web go much more smoothly.

15. Pandrogas
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:54 pm

    May not be as open as the data portability standards, but it would still be very useful to FaceBook developers who want to build supporting websites in additon to their apps. Now they just have to make sure the people using this system aren’t going to do anythng malicious with the data.

16. Steve Repetti
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    I applaud Facebook (and MySpace too, for that matter) for moving towards a more open world and recognizing the rights a user has to his or her data. I am somewhat skeptical, however, of the need for yet another proprietary solution for interacting with the rest of the world — especially when significant work has already been accomplished via that Data Portability initiative (among others). Nevertheless, one step forward is better than no step — and it does represent a significant shift from prior positioning. I can only hope that regardless of any proprietary components behind the scenes that they all find a way to participate, play nice, and help evolve the existing and emerging standards.

17. Ryan Waggoner
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    As Kaliya stated, I’m afraid that this is just another strategy for Facebook to “lock-in” their users and attempt to become the central repository of everyone’s social graph. If that’s the case, this is not data portability as I still don’t have full control over my data.

    Hopefully, they’re going to be fully supporting open standards, but I doubt it. Facebook strikes me as a company that pretends to be open, but is only open one-way or to the extent that they can control.

    Facebook is Microsoft 2.0

18. Eric Dewhirst
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    This is MASSIVE - it is an extension of federated identity and trust models for third party sites. Leveraging a users existing reputation within a known social network has huge benefits.

    I know we are going to be all over this!

    Way to go Facebook - thanks TC for reporting it.

    Cheers - Eric

19. Rich
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

    Surely a website could be made that transforms this data into nice semantic data?

    Surely we could already write a site like that come to think about it…

20. Paul Lindner
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:20 pm

    This is good, but since it’s based on a proprietary standard it doesn’t help the effort of making the web better. It only makes the web better for facebook and it’s partners.

    That’s why open standards are so important.

21. phenom
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    Wow that was fast from FB. Open std are so important.

22. John McCrea
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    Sounds great! What a week! Of course, as with the MySpace announcement, the details will be important. Hoping to see open standards in the mix.

23. Matt
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    Clever way to avoid supporting OpenID

24. ???
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:44 pm

    Anybody remember when you could do stuff on the web anonymously?

    I like the idea of being able to leave stupid comments on Digg without it being tied to a mountain of personal information, no matter how “secure” they try to make it.

25. speaking4u
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    woah! can’t make openID anymore..

26. Chris S
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    #4 Josh yea, i just saw that..

    “Network Pages will be discontinued soon
    Facebook will soon be removing Network Pages from the site. Please keep this in mind when communicating with others on the Wall and on the discussion board. You can use Groups to connect with the people around you.”

    What will happen now? No more networks, does that mean, anyone can see my profile? Holy cow, if they do that, then Facebook will be like MySpace. Or does that mean, they are just removing the Network pages a.k.a Spam Market.

27. Tientien
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

    Federated Social Data Networks (FSDN): MySpace vs Facebook…

    Looks like we will have two or more federated social data networks soon. This is interesting… like federated identity managers that allows each user to define his/her own rules on whom and what to share between sites.

28. Darnell Clayton
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    What is needed is an ability for one site (say MySpace) to import data from a second site (say Facebook or orkut).

    Now that would truly be awesome!

29. Paul
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

    It would be more impressive if they let you set levels of information to be shared with other sites. Until then, too dangerous.

30. pigeek
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

    “The more you tighten your grip, Facebook, the more star systems, er, users, will slip through your fingers.”

31. E-tech Computers
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    That’s amazing! BTW I though Myspace was old News? Most people here deleted their myspace accounts after facebook got big.

32. Rodney Rumford
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    Big leap forward for facebook and other sites with this announcement.

    The big news is that this will encourage even more people to use facebook since facebook could become a popular verification and friends portability mechanism.

    Imagine all your friends digging stories you dugg when you can pull them into digg and easily see what they dugg???

    Cheers!

    Rodney Rumford
    More thoughts here:
    http://facereviews.com/2008/05.....ortability

33. Dan Birdwhistell
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 3:33 pm

    It’s great to see FB make this move. As we showed with FriendCSV and data imports on bigsight.org, FB has long allowed third party sites to do just what they are announcing now; however, it appears as though the process will be streamlined a bit more, which is great. I doubt that this will move incredibly fast, though…it seems more like a quick response to MySpace.

    A big key here that people don’t seem to be paying attention to is that the “networks” pages are disappearing. Who knows what this is about…

34. AJ Arora
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    I agree, this is very interesting even though there doesn’t seem to be all that much new functionality yet. I always had a feeling that the internal Facebook vision/mantra was to push towards someday having a blue bar at the top of every page that a user browses on the internet.

    I have to disagree however that this was rolled out solely because of the MySpace Data Availability announcement. This seems to be a shift in strategic direction from the usual “walled garden” approach, which would have required a bit more time (although it could have been motivated by advance knowledge of the MySpace initiative).

35. Chris S
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 4:42 pm

    A big key here that people don’t seem to be paying attention to is that the “networks” pages are disappearing. Who knows what this is about…

    That is right Dan #33, I am now worried that they might open up all network, so that you can see everyone’s full or semi full profile which might create a whole “pedophilic”environment. That may be the reason why they made a Safety and Privacy deal few days ago. Wow..if that is true..things will start getting scary.

36. Dan Reich
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 6:12 pm

    It seems as if other social networking sites and social media platforms are working towards building an ecosystem across the web, aiming for open standard initiatives. At the same time, this looks like Facebook is trying to control those open social initiatives.

    Should Facebook execute this properly, it could be really beneficial for the end user, even if they have more control over user information. But is it worth it?

37. Auston
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

    I think this is an awesome move for them. I wanted this from Open Social, and asked Kevin Marks for it. I didn’t get it.

    Facebook is giving it to me soon, and I love it. I think it will really allow for mashups to begin integrating data on a completely new level.

38. MyMesh.com
    

    May 9th, 2008 at 9:18 pm

    Nice move. Open interconnectivity is the way to go!

39. Alex Hammer
    

    May 10th, 2008 at 4:58 am

    I believe in the general truth of the maxim that “change tends to be overestimated in the short term, but underestimated in the long term”. This is why early adopters often don’t make the big bucks but instead set the table for those with deep pockets that later do. That having been said, in this world of reduced product cycles (see how each company is coming out quickly with similar services right on top of each other’s announcements — it is the law, I believe, of “accelerating returns”, which, as has been detailed for example by Ray Kurzweil, which explains that the rate of change itself is increasing) innovation and speed and depth and integration of innovation become ever increasingly the key competitive advantages.

40. Hip-Hop Music Videos
    

    May 10th, 2008 at 6:15 am

    That was fast, FACEBOOK ROCKS!!!!

41. Gypsy
    

    May 10th, 2008 at 9:05 am

    MYSPACE ROCKS!!!!!!!

42. Torley
    

    May 10th, 2008 at 11:10 am

    Looking forward to trying this out.

43. Jean-Marc Liotier
    

    May 10th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    A big double walled garden is still a walled garden…

44. jb
    

    May 11th, 2008 at 7:08 am

    Open standards are great in theory. And would be good in practice. The problem is outside of developer/geek circles no one “gets it” or cares. I think that’s what we sometimes don’t see around here often times.

    The average user does not feel any pain or see any reason to move toward a service with open standards. They don’t understand the purpose and are not motivated to join a service because it is “open”. And I don’t see any way that is going to change.

    So open standards, OAuth, whatever… sounds good but likely won’t work. It is more likely that a single company…. Facebook, Google, etc. is going to be successful with lock-in strategies. Developers will meanwhile have to accept that you will have to independently support multiple APIs to tie into one or a few identity providers that control the social grid.

45. Gonzalo
    

    May 12th, 2008 at 6:39 am

    Good news for the users. We need a Data Availability as soon as posible.

46. Goose
    

    May 12th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    I’m really glad to see this! One of the things I love about Facebook is that their products tend to actually work… I’ve been extremely frustrated with just about everything Myspace and OpenID hasn’t worked for me either..