Google’s got a new partner at Friend Connect, their service to let users log in to third party websites with their user credentials from social networks.
Last week at Le Web conference MySpace was doing all the heavy lifting to promote Google Friend Connect. But it turns out Twitter is the first third party service after Plaxo to actually integrate with Google’s new service.
What The New Announcement Means
For users, it just means you can use your Twitter credentials to sign into third party sites like Billboard For The People, and pull in your Twitter friends and some profile information.
But for Twitter, it’s a real change in policy and an illustration of just how much they’ve grown in the last year. Back in May Twitter was seen as a relying party in the Google/MySpace/Facebook war, and they hastily chose MySpace as their partner of choice (Data Availability is now called MySpaceID). In their launch announcement for Data Availability MySpace showed a Twitter log in screen where users were using their MySpace account to access Twitter.
That partnership was never integrated, and MySpace won’t say when or if it will be. But today Twitter is using Google’s infrastructure to push their their own agenda. Twitter is effectively saying they don’t need Facebook’s or MySpace’s help with user registrations. Instead, they can compete head to head with both of them in the race to “own” user identities.
Twitter is coming of age, and this announcement is just one more piece of evidence that they have arrived.
Update: Google emails “Users can sign-in or join a friend connected website using their Google, Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID credentials. The Twitter integration occurs after a user has already signed in, at which point he can (as you mentioned) choose to link his Twitter profile to his Friend Connect profile, see which of the people he follows have joined the same site, and “tweet” back to his followers by clicking “invite” and then clicking “share.”"
So what does this mean Mike? Are websites going to switch to Google friends rather than Facebook Connect? Choose both?, or will Myspace be able to catch up? Although I guess MySpace is a different market for some sites.
IMHO if anyone wins this battle to be the universal ID it will be the one that provides the most value, transparency and control to the user. I have more faith in google achieving that aim than I do facebook. Facebook continues to act like the AOL of web 2.0 with a walled garden, selective transparency and control, and a lack of focus on creating value for users. I think the other problem facebook has is it’s static ’social graph’ that calcifies as you build it, mine is probably a year out of date. Both twitter and google are building dynamic or adaptive social graphs which change based upon actual communication and relationships.
I see the validity of your latter point, but keep in mind that usage of the big networks varies heavily among different user segments. I’m lucky to be able to closely observe the habits of 2 communities, the tech “early adopter” crowd (that heavily uses Twitter and related services), and the mainstream college-age segment that operates almost exclusively on Facebook.
While your social graph on Facebook may be static, I presume it’s primarily due to lack of usage. Facebook definitely is using some semblance of a dynamic graph, as plainly evidenced by their news feeds– items on the feed vary based on who you talk to, whose profiles you visit, and other observable action data that signal intent towards other users.
Big words big words big words – small point.
http://manoj91.myopenid.com/
sort of like this one…
“Twitter is coming of age, and this announcement is just one more piece of evidence that they have arrived.”
This is spot on… in the last few months, using Twitter to engage with our TotSpot users & partners, we’ve found Twitter to be a very important piece of the puzzle… much more central than FB Fan Pages or MySpace pages…
As a publisher though, considering the various options for login, only FB Connect is appealing because of the potential distribution…
I would like to know the answer to the Andy’s question. Anyone have any ideas as to where this is going?
My money is on Facebook/Microsoft. As impressive as Google is, they haven’t really dominated anything other than search. Microsoft knows how to win, as seen over and over. All they need to do is integrate Facebook ID right into Windows and its game over.
Bingo. For the longest time, I’ve thought that a FB / Windows combination would totally revitalize MS on the web…
I don’t agree, facebook/microsoft is not a great combination at all. I don’t believe that facebook has much of a business model at all, all they have is a massive userbase but no plausible way to make a lot of money from that user base. Anyone that advertises on facebook knows how incredibly ineffective and cheap it is. They keep saying their going to change the face of advertising, and yet I have seen zero competence around this topic. They haven’t even hired any heavy hitters who have a credible voice in the advertising industry that I know of.
You’re nuts Mark. Microsoft has had a tough time winning anything web related. They won the browser war in the first round, but I think they lack the innovation/web culture to compete with Google.
The people at Microsoft have a desktop mentality. They also have an anti-competitive nature. It’s just part of their culture. Obviously neither of those work on the web.
msn messenger + hotmail merged into facebook, that’s not so bad
This is a tough call for sure. One only has to look at a widget like AddThis to see all the places one can post an article. The same will be true of single sign on – I am not sure we are going to see a winner here as we have in the search business. As an integrator you will have to look at your user/member demographic and figure out which one you want to support and inevitably you will have to support many.
Cheers – Eric
In the past we had so many accounts to remember. Now we will have to remember what site use what profiles.
I love FaceBook connect more.
I don’t really see this as a race. It is not hard to implement all three. The problem is for users to decide which network to overshare on.
I like this, I also like the Facebook Connect but less logins is a good thing too
Google Friend Connect is *not* a universal log in system. That is not the target application of Friend Connect. Facebook Connect is a universal log in system. Friend Connect is a way of adding social features to otherwise static websites.
I talk more about it here: http://www.jtol...t-this-straight
Please stop spreading this myth that Friend Connect and Facebook Connect are mano-a-mano on feature set.
The Twitter Groups site http://twittgroups.com is now using the new Friends Connect feature with Twitter.
Works great!
No, you can not use your twitter profile to sign in You ADD your twitter profile to your existing Friend Connnect account. That’s not confusing at all is it? This integration means nothing except that Twitter has an API… one that requires you to give out your username and password to everyone. Frankly I am surprised that Google found Twitter important enough to “do evil” and support such an insecure API.
Meta-login systems like this won’t go anywhere because they are way too confusing for the user and it takes too much control away from the publishers.
Stick with OpenID and maybe Facebook Connect. But even Facebook Connect has it’s issues. I had to view source of TechCrunch to find the logout url.
The reason why Daniel here is confused is because of this constant comparison of Friend Connect to Facebook Connect.
They aren’t the same product! Friend Connect isn’t a log in system. It’s like Facebook for the rest of the web.
I just posted a link to my longer explanation above, but here it is again: http://www.jtol...t-this-straight
In light of that, adding your Twitter profile to your existing Friend Connect account makes total sense.
Meh.
Um, so with that update from Google, isn’t this whole article is basicly wrong or pointless?
You CAN’T use Twitter credentials to log into other sites. It’s just profile and friend integration after you’ve used some other login. Not exactly groundbreaking and it directly contradicts the points about Twitter being so strong it doesn’t need login partners.
Am I missing something?
No, Google just emailed to clarify what I’ve been saying all along (see above).
True, MSN has been a leader for sometime but even the biggest giants have to come down sooner or later and i think in the next five years Google is going to step on their toes quiet a bit.
Wow, for anyone trying to build a blog up (like me
) this is all a little bewildering when it comes to comments – Friend Connect, Facebook Connect, Disqus, Twitter, Intense Debate, plus your own blog software’s sign-up option. It could make some blogs very messy and it could allow some to really open up their content to more crowds, I guess.
Testing comment using Facebook Connect…
Twitter’s annoucement to its users isn’t very detailed:
http://blog.twi...ore-places.html
I doubt many users are going to read that tepid endorsement and think “Wow! I have to use that feature!”
Hopefully, it looks more exciting on Google’s end of things.
I think it s a good news and a good step on dataportability and I could be very simple for us if every body use Open ID,,, a lot of those partnerships will rise,,, we are at the beginning, Give Open Id a chance:)
For some reason, I don’t like this whole idea of logging in using profiles from other websites. I would feel uncomfortable sharing my Google profile that I use for for serious communication with Twitter where my friends send updates about how they’ve just seen and drooled over some hot girl. Or connect my professional LinkedIn profile with Myspace where I tend to show more of my eccentric and outgoing side. I enjoy that separation.
It’s like asking me to wear a suit to a football game or wear my football gear to a dance club.
I just don’t feel this whole attempt for a universal login thingamajig.
Agree Justen. What if my user name / password gets stolen? Then they get the keys to everywhere I go on the web! Don’t like it.
Google missed a real opportunity here to lean on Twitter to build support for delegated authorization (say, via OAuth). Sure–Twitter support is useful to Friend Connect and its users even barring that, and of all the possible organizations to trust with my Twitter credentials, Google’s on the more solid end. But still, if Twitter knew that it wasn’t going to get big partnerships without spending some time on security hygiene, it might help them do the right thing since they clearly don’t care on their own.
I totally agreee that Google dropped the ball here, and is encouraging bad API security and bad user habits.
Twitter will have an OAuth solution soon (or so they say, but they have said that many times). Which goes to show that Google probably has not talked to Twitter at all, or else they probably would have waited to integrate.
Would have been more exciting to be able to use twitter credentials to log in with.
“But it turns out Twitter is the first third party service after Plaxo”
Doesn’t that make it the second?
I would like the ability to share individual posts not just the entire site. That would make Google Friend Connect work like a Twitter bookmarklet!
It is NOT Google vs FB for Twitter:
http://twitter....atus/1059144975
The twitter guys should just name their price and let google write the check. This highlights the point that twitter needs a big brother to battle myspace and facebook (especially facebook). It’s just a matter of time. Certainly they could get a better deal from google then the recent offer from facebook–
http://bits.blo...-down-facebook/
I keep saying: 2009 is Twitter’s moment.
Now if there were more apps/gadgets, whatever they are called.
As a website owner, I ask myself, which will bring more traffic. My bet’s on Facebook Connect.
Overall this is getting really messy, I’m worried about user experience: how do we educate users that they can log in anywhere with all sorts of credentials ?
I’m not sure that we’ll see a “winner” anytime soon. For Twitter, it does make more sense to support Facebook: it seems to be the same crowd overall.
Hail to the Thieves
Facebook Connect, Google Open Social, and twitter the closed source content trap are all a slap in the face to the Open Principals of the internet.
Any developer and proponent of a truly Open web must take an active roll in pushing for the success of Laconica and OpenID and should not help to extend any closed source application.
Today we have no less than 3 closed source companies in a race to become the “Standard” for holding our Identity and therefore having access to the content that we read and creates. These companies will leverage our content to create revenue; giving nothing back to the content owners or to the community.
Why do developers especially Open Source developers continue to build and extend applications for closed source companies that under mind open source standards and ideals ?
Why do users continue to view giving control of their identity and content to these companies as a win, when in fact the win is clearly on the side of the company that you have allowed to take control of your identity and to generate value and revenue from your content. In return for our compliance we do not even have a right to take our identity and our content where we want.
Open Source developers, please do not write any code to extend the propitiatory services of closed source applications . They are not your “Friend” When you write code for these companies you undermine the integrity of the Open Web.
Err who cares. We already have this it’s called MyOpenID.com and if you must have a Widget to show it all what’s wrong with MyBlogLog.com ?? MyOpenID.com will eventually overtake it all back by introducing whatever Google is supposed to have now – whether it be a fancy Widget or better.
You can now integrate Twitter into Google Friend Connect. Then using the Google Friend Connect widget you can send a Tweet about the blog you are visiting directly .
Meta-login systems like this won’t go anywhere because they are way too confusing for the user and it takes too much control away from the publishers.
hey twitter is on BOOM ! and really fast growing social site.