I'd be interested to see you do a side by side, e.g. - which one is better. My vote is torn because although I use gmail, google calendar, google documents (religiously), reader, analytics, gtalk (the list goes on), they haven't really done much in the way of building something that really ties people together like facebook. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
I see you have the google friend connect on your sidebar, is that the winner in mashables eyes? I guess it sort of depends on your needs but curious to know, as I'm sure others are, what the breakdown is between the two.
And do you think openid will have to do something in order to remain a player, since these other services seem like they bring so much more to the table than just simple handshake/authentication?
Adam Ostrow
· 1 year ago
I think they aren't quite the same ... as we have it on our sidebar, that's basically a cut and paste gadget that Google offers - no "real" coding required. In other words, it's a widget, that happens to use your Google account and contacts to generate some simple stuff like showing which of your friends use Mashable. You can do more complex stuff with it though and use it for your entire authentication system, as Qloud seems to have done. But yea, the big advantage for Facebook is that the data can flow back into the News feed, giving websites both the advantage of no-sign up required and viral marketing. The advantage for OpenID - and it may just be a philosophical one, is that it's not really tied to the solvency of any one company.
I would also be interested to see a side by side comparison of Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect.
Damian
· 1 year ago
No doubt that services like this solve the big issue with OpenID - that it was generally unusable in its initial form - not from a technical standpoint - but from a UI perspective and a "sales" perspective - no matter how hard I tried to explain the benefits of OpenID to the slightly-more-than-casual internet user - they just didn't seem to care about having a centralized ID.
Dude
· 1 year ago
"Additionally, other key Facebook features, like your friends list, can now be integrated into third-party applications, which can in turn send data back into Facebook and the News Feed."
Oh wow, so then it's just oAuth ( http://oauth.net/ ). Please don't compare this to OpenID, which is something completely different.
Of course, the real question here is-- open or closed? FBC could potentially create a very AOL-like version of the social Web, a walled garden under the guise of "data portability." I think however, user adoption of this kind of Web experience-- one in which they can have a social context when and where they please, drawing from their single social graph from Facebook (although, don't forget MySpace's Data Availability) for said context. I do think, however, open standards will prevail and we will have decentralized data portability (although, I think FBC is a baby step that has to happen first).
It's like OpenID... except totally not. It's a closed, proprietary system that currently won't be compatible with the OpenID spec that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and MySpace are all working on together right now.
OpenID Fail! :)
Paul Houle
· 11 months ago
I've been developing a network of sites with community features.
Authentication and login is a huge can of worms. On one hand you're got all the spam and hackers, on the other hand you've got the whole problem of getting people to register. Because I've got a network of sites, I'd like the authentication to work across all of them, but I know that most users would have trouble understanding where the network stops and where it ends.
I've been thinking about facebook connect and about openid. In principle I like the idea about openid, but I don't think that most people care about or understand the idea of a centralized identity to be able to understand how to use openid. Facebook connect, on the other hand, is pretty simple. I mean, you either log in with your facebook account (often you don't need to type in any password) or you register on facebook. If somebody wanted to register on my site and they didn't already have an openid, they'd find choosing an openid provider is about as easy and worthwhile as selecting an alternative electricity provider.
In this case, users will find it empowering to have fewer choices.
So far as data portability and all that blah blah blah I think the only people who care are the people who read Mashable and TechCrunch. The other 99.99% don't even know what it is and don't care.
Katie
· 11 months ago
I'm really kind of new to facebook but I love the idea of talking to people around the world. I hope I get to talk to alot of people safely. Lets all be safe. Please/ Thank you.
All Comments
I see you have the google friend connect on your sidebar, is that the winner in mashables eyes? I guess it sort of depends on your needs but curious to know, as I'm sure others are, what the breakdown is between the two.
And do you think openid will have to do something in order to remain a player, since these other services seem like they bring so much more to the table than just simple handshake/authentication?
Oh wow, so then it's just oAuth ( http://oauth.net/ ). Please don't compare this to OpenID, which is something completely different.
Of course, the real question here is-- open or closed? FBC could potentially create a very AOL-like version of the social Web, a walled garden under the guise of "data portability." I think however, user adoption of this kind of Web experience-- one in which they can have a social context when and where they please, drawing from their single social graph from Facebook (although, don't forget MySpace's Data Availability) for said context. I do think, however, open standards will prevail and we will have decentralized data portability (although, I think FBC is a baby step that has to happen first).
Also, FB has the potential to create business model around FBC (scary or not to users) as noted in this Mash post: http://mashable.com/2008/11/19/facebook-marketing/
OpenID Fail! :)
Authentication and login is a huge can of worms. On one hand you're got all the spam and hackers, on the other hand you've got the whole problem of getting people to register. Because I've got a network of sites, I'd like the authentication to work across all of them, but I know that most users would have trouble understanding where the network stops and where it ends.
I've been thinking about facebook connect and about openid. In principle I like the idea about openid, but I don't think that most people care about or understand the idea of a centralized identity to be able to understand how to use openid. Facebook connect, on the other hand, is pretty simple. I mean, you either log in with your facebook account (often you don't need to type in any password) or you register on facebook. If somebody wanted to register on my site and they didn't already have an openid, they'd find choosing an openid provider is about as easy and worthwhile as selecting an alternative electricity provider.
In this case, users will find it empowering to have fewer choices.
So far as data portability and all that blah blah blah I think the only people who care are the people who read Mashable and TechCrunch. The other 99.99% don't even know what it is and don't care.