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Valleywag
Facebook's formal announcement of Facebook Connect is at once a transparently timed response to MySpace's announcement of partnerships with eBay and Twitter yesterday and the culmination of things the social network has been working on for ages. Facebook Connect, at its simplest, lets websites like Digg and Twitter integrate their users' activity into Facebook users' News Feeds. Those two companies, as well as Yahoo's Flickr and Google's Picasa, have been using Facebook Connect well before it was unveiled under that name. It cements Facebook's role as a central place to keep up with one's friends. Yet I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Facebook evangelist Dave Morin touts the ability to take one's real identity from Facebook to other websites. And indeed, that's one reason why I mocked MySpace's move; its users' pseudonymous logins have no particular value as sources of identity.
But do I really want to interconnect all my online identities? That's the premise of the "data portability" movement — that we really want nothing more than to take our friends with us from one website to another. And yet I'm content to segregate, say, the work acquaintances I have on LinkedIn from the more personal relationships I track on Facebook. Would Valleywag's commenters want to have their real names attached to their accounts? Some are happy to, while for others, that's a deal-breaker — and the site would be the lesser if it lost them.
Mark Zuckerberg's original, brilliant insight — to connect Facebook's identities to real names, schools, and workplaces — is its advantage over rival social networks like Bebo and MySpace. But I'm not sure I want a Web with non anonymity. Morin and others will hasten to note Facebook's privacy options — but surely they realize that when others give up their anonymity, there will be peer pressure for most to do so.
Real identity has value, say, when conducting commerce, which is why it's laughable that eBay partnered with MySpace and not Facebook — just another sign of that company's clueless technological leadership. But anonymity has its benefits. Facebook Connect threatens the anonymous Web. For that reason, I can't wish Facebook Connect anything more than partial success.
Comments
I know exactly how I feel about this. With my tinfoil hat firmly in place, I never forget that Facebook's venture capital comes from radical right-wingers and the CIA.
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I always blog using my real name. Anyone who doesn't is obviously a fraud. Or one of those fuckers at Wired.
"Would Valleywag's commenters want to have their real names attached to their accounts?"
HELL NO!
I doubt though that people would use Facebook Connect to blow their cover, unless they are explicit about their desire to be public.
@scalawag: You need to man up. Posting with my real name is yet another indication to the public of my flawless integrity.
@Fake Jimbo Wales: Fake is as Fake does!
"But do I really want to interconnect all my online identities? That's the premise of the "data portability" movement - that we really want nothing more than to take our friends with us from one website to another."
The premise of data portability is certainly the latter, but not necessarily the former.
Specifically, I want to be _able_ to take the data collected at one place and apply it elsewhere. Not forced to do so, just capable of it.
Of course, Facebook, MySpace and others are going to create something profitable that has little to do with actual data portability. Connect is a fine example. It doesn't let me take Facebook data out of Facebook, it just lets me merge more data into it.
Im kinda pissed because I was trying to make an app like this except for all the cyber stalking.
I'm with @scalawag on this.
Synchronizing the identities is a godsend for the people who lie for a living (like PR peeps.) They really need to keep their lies synchronized. Their nightmares are made of forgetting which lies are paid for by whom.
You had a post (with a deck of slides) couple of weeks ago about some VC lady praising OpenID (or some such.) It may be worth re-reading.
I think this concept has a market potential. Rachel Marsden would probably pay for it. Or at least befriend one of their executives.
But...raincoaster is way more famous than my real name. Maybe I should change it?
"And indeed, that's one reason why I mocked MySpace's move; its users' pseudonymous logins have no particular value as sources of identity"
Wait... you think that FadBook has real identities?
Wow!
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