Facebook Connect – What about OpenID?
Facebook has launched Facebook Connect (first announced in May 2008) that allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites.
FB has announced that in the next few weeks, few prominent sites (Digg/SFChronicle etc) will start rolling out it’s Connect service on their website.
So essentially, you can leave a comment on Digg using your FB id/password and the same will show up on your FB news feed.
What about OpenID/DataPortability?
FB Connect achieves the same functionality as OpenID – just that it is built on proprietary code (which is not open at all) – a clear threat to OpenID.
Essentially, Facebook is trying to replace all logins with their own, and control the creation, distribution and application of the social graph using their proprietary platform.
The most scary part of this, is that while Facebook is quietly and methodically building out this vision with massive partners, the standards community is busy squabbling about naming the open alternative. – Chris Saad (co-founder of the Data Portability project).
FB’s policy on Connect:
When Facebook Connect is used to allow a user to “sign in” or authenticate with your website, the Facebook Connect option must be presented at least as prominently as the most prominent of any other sign in or authentication method on your site, and not as a secondary option. – Dev wiki
So, the social network overlord wants to own your users and in the process, build a better social graph for it’s own purpose.
Only time will tell whether OpenID gets past the internal struggle and catches up with Facebook.
If you are a socionet owner, will you participate in FB Connect?
openid sucks – do you remember your openid?
Isn’t FB Connect more close to OAuth than OpenID? Because FBCOnnect is all about authorizing a 3rd party app to use a user’s data without revealing user credentials which is exactly what OAuth is doing.
Hail to the Thieves
So interesting that a short time ago Microsoft (A closed source company) wanted to push forward a standard (Passport) that would have give users the ability to have one log in that worked for many sites. At the time many in the tech and development community saw this as just another Microsoft Land Grab for our Identity and our Content. Many people saw Passport as a Microsoft effort to finally gain control of the internet by becoming the standard for digital identity.
Today we have no less than 3 closed source companies in a race to become the “Standard” for holding or Identity and therefore having access to the content that we read and the content that we creates.
All of this at a time when there are many Open Source standards that could be used (Openid is just one that comes to mind) that if properly deployed would do the right thing by putting the user/member in charge of their log in as well as their relationships across many sites.
Have we forgotten the lesson of the not so distance past ?
Why do we not see a problem with the big 3 trying to become the proprietary standard in this very important area ?
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.
At adelph.us we believe in members freedom to control their accounts, and their content. We also believe that any revenue model should always put the members in the equation first. We believe in the Open Source community and ideals. We know we are not the smartest guys in the room and trust the our community of members and developers.
Break the chains of the old web 2.0 model. Do not give your content or your software development work to closed source old world companies they only seek to profit from you
[...] (and not relying on any socialnetwork per se) – smart way to combat Facebook (which launched FacebookConnect few days [...]
I will because I don’t want users to go away just because they are tired of creating yet another username and password for my site. I have integrated google friend connect to my site but it does not serve the purpose as of now as even after logging in with google id users have limited things to do. They cant do real stuff on my site because for that they will need to login with my proprietary login system. Facebook connect breaks this wall and allows user to do everything on my site.
If Google does not fix this problem soon it will be hard to sustain against Facebook Connect.
Hello, I came across this post while looking for help with Microsoft Silverlight. I’ve recently switched internet browser from Opera to Microsoft IE 6. Now I seem to have a issue with loading websites that have Microsoft Silverlight. Every time I browse website that needs Microsoft Silverlight, my browser does not load and I get a “npctrl.dll” error. I can’t seem to find out how to fix the problem. Any aid getting Microsoft Silverlight to function is greatly appreciated! Thanks