The New York Times is reporting that Facebook Connect is heralding the start of a social web that will increase the visibility and connectedness of online profiles. The move also brings up some privacy concerns as web users share more and more of their lives online.
Facebook Connect, as the company’s new feature is called, allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. Like Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced and then withdrew last year after it raised a hullabaloo over privacy, Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions on those sites to their friends on Facebook.
In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.
Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.
Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence of a new “social Web,” because chatter among friends will infiltrate even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.
Increased social networking opens up ad revenue potential, the piece goes on to say, and also brings up some privacy concerns as more of our digital lives are shared with others. The ability to connect with others and share experiences online continues to evolve and Reputation.com will continue to provide updates on this situation.
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