Facebook Connect squares up to Google, OpenID and OpenSocial (again)

It was May when Facebook Connect was first announced with the aim of "socialising" any website. With launch only a few weeks away, does it create more risks than benefits for social media users?

I've written about Facebook Connect and Google's rival Friend Connect before, shortly after they were announced and then by mention a few months ago at how little progress either had made. Well now it seems the first of these is almost ready to roll. And it seems the time spent has ensured it will do a little more than first anticipated.

Facebook Connect will now enable Facebook users to log in to remote participating sites using a Facebook ID, connect with friends on that site and share updates of activity back on their Facebook updates. Third party sites already signed up include Twitter and Plaxo (Plaxo also supports OpenID by the way), but all stand to gain from easy access to the 120 million Facebook users; who, in turn, stand to gain from easy access through their Facebook IDs to a whole array of interesting third party sites without needing to registera new identity and build a friends list from scratch.

Of course, the proprietary nature of Facebook's technology for doing this has sentt various observers into a whirl, all of whom are voicing concerns about the "walled garden" approach; users and website owners being locked in; that anyone is not using open standards in 2008; and just how trustworthy Facebook will prove to be with the new information on web usage it will be collecting.

But here's the thing: there is no real rival to the initiative even though everyone is crying out for one. In spite of the Data Portability crowd advocating OpenID, OpenAuth and OpenSocial, it has hardly moved at all in the last year and what implementations there are suffer from clunkiness that puts it beyond the use of the average man in the street, who just wants to be able to log into a website easily.

There are a few sites I use that utilise OpenID, but in spite of having spent 5 years heading information security companies specialising in web Single Sign On (PKI based since you ask...), my heart sinks when I can see I have to use one of my OpenID identities. It is all just too clumsy. Give me something easier.

Like Facebook Connect for example. OK, you can never delete a Facebook profile; and there are frequent concerns voiced about whether they are on top of security as people's pictures get leaked. And it is, of course, all proprietary technology rather than Open Source. But with 120 million people using Facebook without too many of these concerns at the front of their mind, who cares?

Speaking as both a user and the owner of a website that I'd love to see made easier for new visitors to register and use fully, the Facebook option excites me more. Or at least it will until the Data Portability supporters of OpenSocial and OpenID stop building it for techies and arguing about branding and start getting serious.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz