Breaking News: Facebook Announces Facebook Connect

With the launch of Facebook Connect, facebook will be enabling people to communicate and stay connected wherever they go. This is a great step forward as many new services will jump up around using those friend connections that you have on facebook. We had already mentioned that using facebook as an authentication device was a smart thing.

This will make it even easier for facebook users to “take” their connections other places outside of facebook. This aspect of the soon to be released API for developers will really make facebook even more dominant and valuable in the long term. The push for people to join facebook will become even greater as more of these services evolve outside of facebook.

In the examples below they show digg. Imagine how cool it will be for you to see what your facebook friends dugg easily. Imagine the increased velocity that interesting posts can be dugg by your network of friends. I can also imagine a new service arising that does interesting things with those connections around events and photos.

I can also now see these connections (and authentication) being used in widgets and for special campaigns by large brands for specific promotions. This is win/win/win all the way around.

Facebook connect is not live just yet but is coming soon. They will be working with developers working out the details over the coming months. All in all this is huge news as information will be able to flow more easily outside of facebook. I always had faith they would do it.

The word from Dave Morin From Facebook:

In August 2006, we introduced the first version of the Facebook API, enabling users to share their information with the third party websites and applications they choose. Hundreds of companies have leveraged these APIs, allowing users to dynamically connect their identity information from Facebook, such as basic profile, friends, photos information and more, to third party websites, as well as desktop and mobile applications.

In May 2007, we launched Facebook Platform, which allowed third party developers to build rich social applications within Facebook. More than 350,000 developers and entrepreneurs from 225 countries have signed up, and started developing applications, and have seen significant adoption by Facebook users worldwide.

Today we are announcing Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to “connect” their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site. This will now enable third party websites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook – similar to features available to third party applications today on Facebook.

Here are just a few of the coming features of Facebook Connect:

Trusted Authentication
Users will be able to connect their Facebook account with any partner website using a trusted authentication method. Whether at login, or anywhere else a developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.

Real Identity
Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friends Access
Users count on Facebook to stay connected to their friends and family. With Facebook Connect, users can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites. Developers will even be able to dynamically show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy
As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date. For example, if a user changes their profile picture, or removes a friend connection, this will be automatically updated in the external website.

These are just a few steps Facebook is taking to make the vision of data portability a reality for users worldwide. We believe the next evolution of data portability is about much more than data. It’s about giving users the ability to take their identity and friends with them around the Web, while being able to trust that their information is always up to date and always protected by their privacy settings.

Update: TechCrunch also has some thoughts on this Facebook Connect News.

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