If ever you’ve wished for a way to connect all 120+ million Facebook users with your business or community website, wish no longer–the solution is here. Facebook Connect promises to link any Facebook user’s existing account with a website which implements the service and integrates it with a new or existing database of users. Basically, this means that with a site visitor’s approval, you can access certain information from their personal profile on the popular social networking site. The uses for such information are practically unlimited, providing businesses new ways to target ads to specific users–making them even more relevant than Google’s own advertising system, which displays ads based on the analysis of each search.
Facebook Connect is hot on the heels of Google’s own “Friend Connect” system, which similarly allows anyone with a Google, Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID account to login to a partner site using the credentials of their choice. I suspect that Google’s program is probably a bit more open at this point, but it remains to be seen which service is the most effective.
While Google is by far one of the most popular sites on the web, with more than a billion searches performed each day, it certainly has a significant user base. Unfortunately, not nearly as many people have a Google Account or supply that account with personally identifiable information as they would on popular social networking sites. Facebook has the edge here in collecting users’ favorite books, movies, TV shows, music, hobbies and more, so if a site like Amazon partnered with Facebook Connect, it could offer pinpoint accurate suggestions to shoppers. You like Lord of the Rings? Here’s a set of books and movies in the same genre. The possibilities really are endless.
Ultimately, I believe that APIs like Google’s OpenSocial will be the key to linking each social network site into one global peoplenet. It’ll be crucial for the average user and consumer to be able to login to any site, whether using Facebook Connect, Friend Connect, or the older MySpace Data Availability initiative. It shouldn’t matter which service I prefer–I should be able to access my information from Facebook while logged into Google and vice-versa. It only makes sense!
All things equal, this opens up a huge can of worms in the privacy arena and it’ll be up to users and social networks to come to an agreement on what information is sharable without violating privacy rights.
It’s exciting though, and I can’t wait to see how things progress from here!
APIs, facebook, google, myspace, social-networking
I just installed and configured the Google Analytics plugin for my blog here at randompsychology.com. For the uninitiated, Analytics gives me a ton of information about users that stop by the site. Stuff like how long they stay, what country they’re from, how they arrived to the site (e.g. did they just type the URL into the browser or did they click a link from another website?), how long visits typically last, and which browser and operating system they’re using (yes, the Firefox/Internet Explorer browser wars are as hot as ever!). But don’t worry–none of this information can be traced back to you! It can’t be used to find out the names of your pets, deceased grandparents, ex-boyfriends or girlfriends, or anything else like that. You’re still totally anonymous (unless of course you create an account so you’ll be able to post comments and contribute to the site in various ways. 
Okay…slow day in the news-room. Hope you weren’t too bored by today’s ramblings. You should probably be out celebrating Memorial Day anyway. Please remember our troops and keep them in your prayers! They’re giving their lives for you every day.
analytics, google, holidays, Information, memorial day, Troops, usa