Facebook Connect har annonceret samarbejde med en masse betydelige sites på nettet, skriver Wired. Bl.a. Digg.com, Discovery.com og Hulu.com.
Dette er i direkte konkurrence med teknologier som OpenID, hvilket kæmper for at få udbredelse, hovedsageligt fordi brugeroplevelsen er skidt.

Essentially, Facebook is trying to replace all logins with their own, and control the creation, distribution and application of the social graph using their proprietary platform.

Chris Saad er, som citatet ovenfor angiver, ikke ligefrem begrejstret for Facebook Connect.
Og hvorfor ikke? Facebook giver jo websites mulighed for at tappe af FBs 120 mio. brugere, og brugerne får på nem og elegant måde et Single-Sign-On (SSO) på nettet. Så er alle vel glade, ikke?

Ej, ikke helt. For stoler du på at Facebook forvalter dine data moralsk forsvarligt? Kan du stole på at de ikke udnytter dem, eller bare terminerer din profil?

The problem with this scenario is trust. Can I trust facebook to play nice with me if I vest my social network with them? The answer is NO. They have made a long-term practice of deleting people’s profiles without explanation or logic.

Kilde.

Og dét er jo den primære grund til at OpenID bør blive den udbredte standard – netop at vi får en åben standard som ikke bliver styret eller er ejet af en ultra-kommercielt entitet, som vi grundlæggende ikke kan eller bør stole på.

Men Facebook har gjort det godt, og det fungerer for rigtig mange, så det bliver en svær nød at knække – især fordi OpenID i den nuværende implementeringer ikke er spor brugervenlig, viser undersøgelser og min sunde fornuft.

Ming Yeow beskriver det rigtig godt:

Several of my friends run the fastest growing social sites around. They are not interested in open standards nor facebook, but interested in growing their business.

They grew their business on the back of FB platform, and they are either diversifying outwards, or building a standalone brand.

Now, FB Connect sometimes scares the fuck out of them, with one of them highlighting to a little mentioned ruling: FB requires their “Connect” to be the most prominent authentication method on the site. See http://r5.sharedcopy.com/544fm

Given that most sites can only have at most 2 logins (their own + one other), it is clear that any other login mechanism is going to be stifled.

Now, they are going to implement Connect anyway, such is FB’s network power (Hey, my mum is on FB). But they will jump at the first sign of a feasible alternative.

Summarizing, owners do want to get their independence from FB, but it is up to us to give them a solid alternative.

Så det gælder om at få brugeroplevelsen på OpenID til at blive langt bedre og smertefri, og så må vi ellers håbe at Joseph Smarr fra Plaxo har ret når han udtaler:

“It’s common to see innovation in a closed ecosystem happen a little bit faster than in the open because you can control it all yourself,” he says. “Of course, when things open up you get so much more collective innovation that it quickly outstrips any one person who attempts to do it all themselves no matter how talented they are.”

Kilder:

• Wired: As Facebook Connect Expands, OpenID’s Challenges Grow
• Chris Saad: Facebook Connect AKA Hailstorm 2.0
• Webmonkey: OpenID Is Here. Too Bad Users Can’t Figure Out How It Works
• Webmonkey: Yahoo Users Befuddled by OpenID