Facebook Connect May Succeed Where OpenID Has Not

Facebook has released an abundance of features and upgrades lately-some were shiny, some were funny, and some were, well, kind of pointless. But all of the new additions have focused on enhancing and expanding the user experience within the website. The release of Facebook Connect is dramatically different, as it seeks to fundamentally expand Facebook's sphere of influence by directly linking the network to other popular sites. More importantly, FB Connect could serve to streamline and simplify the browsing routines of millions of people. To explain how, it is helpful to first take a look at Facebook Connect's closest relative, OpenID.

You may not have heard of OpenID, but if you're tired of filling out website registration forms you'll probably be an instant fan of its concept. OpenID is all about decentralizing your online identity, so that you can log into all of your favorite websites with a single username and password. To do so, you first have to sign up for a free account with an OpenID provider; AOL actually offers the service to the many people who have a screen name and e-mail address from the company. After that, you just need to find a website that accepts OpenID as a valid login. Sounds too easy? Well, that's because many popular websites have been slow to adopt OpenID unfortunately. That is where Facebook Connect comes in.

Facebook Connect has visibility on its side. While OpenID is built around noble principles, it is in many ways a grassroots movement that has been slowed by obscurity. More websites will be eager to bend to Facebook's will, and every one that does is potentially one less set of login information for you to remember. It won't happen overnight, but eventually we could see an influx of major websites allowing users to log in through the Connect service and others like it. You might be viewing an article on a random news site, and this time when you scroll down to check out the comments, signing in to add a new one will be as easy as clicking the Facebook Connect button. Then, if you'd like, the information could be sent back to your Facebook profile for your friends to see.

There is still a downside to all of this identification excitement. The proprietary nature of Facebook's solution means that they hold more power over your information than OpenID does (OpenID is open source, which is why anyone can become a provider). Of course, for the many millions of Facebook users, privacy is already an issue that they either struggle with or could care less about. And luckily there are some competing services besides OpenID, such as Google's predictably titled Friend Connect (which, in true Google fashion, is currently in beta). The ensuing rivalry between these distributed identity services will hopefully help to keep all of them just a bit more honest.