Facebook implements OpenID; the social network giant supports its community
Posted by Manuela Barreto @ May 19th, 2009 in Social Marketing
Facebook has officially joined the OpenID movement. As explained by TechCrunch, OpenID is a distributed single sign on solution that allows people to sign into different services with the same login credentials. Some of you must be thinking, but weren’t they already open? Even though the implementation of Facebook Connect seemed as if the social network giant was opening its doors to the outside world, that wasn’t entirely the case.
Instead, it was the third-party websites who were opening their doors to Facebook by allowing Facebook users to connect to their websites using Facebook Connect.
So what does it mean that Facebook is now OpenID? It means that if you wish to register or just log in to Facebook using another OpenID provider, you may be able to do so (see image below).
Some advantages this new merge with OpenID has to offer Facebook users are that it makes participation in the network easier since it is no longer necessary to start from scratch and create a new ID and password. Users can register using any of the accounts displayed on the image above ie: Gmail, Yahoo!. First timers are already showing to be most proactive due to the quick registration process this new modality has to offer.
Also, it carries payloads of user data (ie: contact lists) that can yield immediate personalization for a richer experience. And finally, it offers authentication that you really are who you say you are. That opens up a whole world of possibilities technically and culturally.
It would be very useful if more websites of the likes of Google, Microsoft or Yahoo! joined in and supported OpenID. As Jason Kincaid from TechCrunch says, users could really benefit from this as it would allow them to seamlessly jump from one service to another, and take advantage of the suite of products they each have to offer. However, since these are by no means comparable to Facebook’s, there’s a good chance they won’t be giving those up quite yet.
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Comments
Barbra Sundquist, Bio Writer
May 25th, 2009
I think it’s becoming more and more important to have a professional bio customized for various social networking sites. For most people the hardest part of writing a professional bio is choosing what to put in and what to leave out. A bio is a little advertisement for you. So think about who will be reading your bio and what you want them to know about you. Then advertise your best and most relevant features!