Your Facebook ID is about to be accepted at a whole lot more sites than just Facebook. Developers have been hacking away with Facebook Connect since last May, and now partner sites are getting ready to launch. CBS’s celebrity gossip site TheInsider is the first to do so. Anyone can log in using their Facebook ID, and then can choose to have any comments, article votes, or poll responses show up in their Facebook feed.
CBS is testing Facebook Connect on TheInsider, and if the response is favorable plans on rolling it out across other CBS.com and Cnet properties. Expect more sites not owned by CBS to launch next week.
More importantly, Facebook Connect could end up replacing Facebook’s Beacon service on CBS and elsewhere. Beacon, to remind everyone, is the advertising-driven platform that was riddled with privacy problems and caused some partners to wish they had never signed up (but never really went away). Beacon identifies whenever a Facebook member visits a partner site and allow certain actions such as adding a rating or review, or saving a recipe, to appear in that member’s feed on Facebook.
Despite patching up some Beacon’s privacy holes, it never really took off. Facebook Connect offers a much better privacy model. It is very clear that you are signing up for it, and there is the convenience factor of being able to use your existing Facebook username and password. And whatever your privacy settings are on Facebook get automatically transferred to every Facebook Connect site where you are also logged in. And for developers, there are just a lot more things they can do with Facebook Connect than make actions appear in members’ feeds. Groups, events, photos, and user status messages can all be grabbed from Facebook and used as features on other sites. As Facebook users make changes on Facebook (or on the partner sites), the changes are updated everywhere.
And Beacon? According to a Facebook spokesperson:
We are not accepting any new developers into the Facebook Beacon program, though the approximately 30 existing sites may continue to use the feature as it suits them best.
Beacon may not be dead quite yet. But it will be soon.
Maybe they launched a bit too soon, from Facebook:
Invalid API Key
The application you are trying to use does not exist or has been disabled.
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Can someone tell me if these partner sites will be storing my FB login credentials if I do choose to so?
No login credentials are stored by partner sites. The credentials are entered into a popup window on the facebook server. Facebook then passes back a unique key for the user, but not the credentials.
I’ve still never understood the problems with Beacon — I love the utility of cross-posting my Yelp Reviews and other types of content — saves me so much time.
It’s that we didn’t know what it shared
Andrew,
Anytime a user complete an action that could possibly show up on Facebook, they were presented a dialogue in the bottom right portion of their browser window that allowed them to block that action from being shared on Facebook.
Hope that helps clear up your misunderstanding.
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet!
Self-Righteous wind-bag vs. Biggest Facebook Apologist Ever
In long term this is going to be danger for facebook
Does Pat O’Brien still work on The Insider or is he in rehab again?
Wow! Congratulations to the Facebook team. Very nice. A little slow, but overall very impressive. This is a major sign of progress toward the open Social Web!
Connect is Beacon with an OpenId like twist
Hopefully I don’t have to sign up in another gazillion place anymore
I used Fbook Connect on TheInsider when I signed up months ago. Are there any other sites where this is live (or sites who recently added it)?
it will be up on a few other sites within the next week or so
love the pirate flag on the techcrunch logo. Go RAIDERS!!!!!!!
I just bought the CD and downloaded it from http://www.barackobama.com/music. What impressed me was the player you can preview the tracks thru. I haven’t seen anything like it before. By the way, what is MagNet?
We are integrating FB Connect into our application, and so far in our tests it has been seamless. Looking forward to going live in a couple months, Connect should really give us a boost.
Thank you MR ARRRRINGTON
You can check out Facebook Connect implementation on…
http://www.govit.com (just try to vote).
We implemented last week.
does FB need to approve each third-party site in advance in order for this to work?
Yes they do.
Sorry folks, under construction…
Will be back up shortly!
Hi Govit,
One big problem with my site. Recently i have uploaded the theRunAround package to my site. i have created a API key and secret with my email id (dhivyan2007@gmail.com).
Once i tried to login with this id means its working well, but suppose if i tried with other accounts means its logged in successfully but not return back to my site. instead its goes to facebook.com
Please advise me…
Thanks,
Kannan
Hey Taylor, you’ve got a serious security issue at your site.
After signing up with facebook connect, I can log in again from another browser with just my first name as my govit username and my (public) facebook uid as my govit password.
Anyone who tries govit: make sure you change your password right after you sign up (if using fbconnect). Unfortunately, doing so requires you to add an email address as well.
Fuck it, who cares?
@ grammar teacher, we’re unable to duplicate. Can you contact me (Taylor at Govit . com)
This is great news, gents. I do not wanting to partake in this practice called ‘trolling’, but I thought that I would introduce you to our new insurance company that protects against social network defaults.
If Facebook fails to live up to their end, we will give you money provided you buy social network insurance.
We’re SIG.
http://SIGinc.wordpress.com
If they can really monetize Beacon, revenues would explode. I hope they are gonna tweak it until they have something really good in terms of business model. Beacon for me it’s the only business model apart from normal ads that makes sense for Facebook.
Anyone knows if FB need to approve each third-party site in advance in order for this to work?
“Even if you put lipstick on a pig … its still a pig”
Zuckenberg is personally approving the process, content and partners for all Connect partners going live.
Beacon is still better even in its current incarnation as opt-out and then opt-in. Many may not know that the way Beacon currently works is that at the conclusion of the event you can opt-out but then when you log in to your Facebook, you still have to opt-in for the action to get posted to your news feed.
Who cares…another useless facebook post. Why do you write so much about a “bubble” company with 200 million in revenues??? What about posting something about a real business.
I like the idea a lot. We will probably implement facebook connect on Klatcher before October.
Klatcher makes your content sell. A place to monetize the creative mind.
wow… a freaking great way for Facebook to expand.
I do not think that helps facebook
We’re taking this to the next level by coordinating the Login, FB social graph feeds, with your location and interests. Some of the twists we added:
1. We let you text, call, or send FB notes to your FB friends in situ (in the widget)
2. We do send your interests to Facebook feeds but the link pulls you to the source publisher.
3. We fire of the widget in a ink to your phone so you can see who is nearby. Right there in place where you are actually going you can see who might be nearby. Then if you want, connect with them! The publishers brand is walking around in the pocket of their visitors!
4. Publishers get deep metrics in their reports on the vibrancy of their users, and get the chance to pull all of their visitors social graph from Facebook to their site for a quick visit.
Try it out at http://phlooq.com
Should have called it ” Facebook Connect U “!
I think it’s possible that Facebook is becoming an increasingly important portal for the web. I wonder if this is what Nova Spivak meant when he said that facebook was becomming the new google and visa versa:
http://memebox.com/futureblogg.....telligence
Hi All
One big problem with my site. Recently i have uploaded the theRunAround package to my site. i have created a API key and secret with my email id (dhivyan2007@gmail.com).
Once i tried to login with this id means its working well, but suppose if i tried with other accounts means its logged in successfully but not return back to my site. instead its goes to facebook.com
Please advise me…
Thanks,
Kannan