More and more sites using Facebook connect (a platform which allows integration of FB content on external sites) are popping up. CBS’s celebrity gossip site TheInsider is among 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. As a viewer, you have a choice to either use your existing ‘insider’ login, or use the f-connect, which asks to use your facebook login. They show a little diagram (image below) highlighting why you should do this: (1) Bring your friends and info to the Insider (2) Post stories from the Insider on your wall….
::sigh::
Dear Facebook marketers: I would’ve thought that you’d be a tad more in tune with your users by now. I know you are desperately working on finding ways to monetize fb, but please don’t push that in between your users and their friends. This is a diagram that lures services and websites to use your service, but does little to tickle user’s appetite to provide access to their personal information. Even though I was appaled by this representation, I was too curious to try it out, so clicked ‘connect’.
What I found pleasantly surprised me – an underlying social layer of little games and applications around the Insider’s content. Similar to a facebook application, a user can interact with friends or any other person hanging out on the site. The Insider provides its users with multiple ways to interact – through chat, direct messaging and games. In the context of this site, none of my fb friends had hung out there. However, I can certainly see the advantage of not needing to negotiate friend connections again and again when signing up to new services.
I am still hesitant to “take my friends” with me, everywhere I go. I believe that if this is the model fb aims to reach, there will be an exodus of users seeking to find a “cleaner” platform – one that will let me connect to my sister without shoving ads in-between us. It also heavily depends on how facebook deals with user privacy, and how/if they are pushed to make business decisions regarding monetization. Erick Schonfeld of techcrunch writes about Facebook Connect’s privacy features:
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.
[tags]facebook, connect, insider, cbs[/tags]
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