Daily Debrief: Facebook Connect aims to simplify, monetize

[ Music ] >> Welcome to the Daily Debrief. I'm CNET's Kara Tsuboi here with Rafe Needleman, Editor of CNET's Webware and we're talking about Facebook Connect and a lot of people may not have heard of this yet because it's brand new. >> They will. >> Ex--yeah, right. Explain what it is. >> Well, Facebook Connect is Facebook's new program that lets anybody who runs a site replace their own log in system for the user with Facebooks or--or do it in addition. So for the user, if you go to sites that you've never been to before and there's a community function, say you wanna leave a talkback or something on a--on a blog post or a review, you previously would have to log into that site or create a new log in with a new password and a new email, all that stuff, yeah, for a site, you're not gonna miss that off. Facebook Connect lets that site say, "Hey, you can now sign in with your Facebook ID." >> Wow. >> So, you click a little Facebook Connect button or whatever it is and you'd given 'em your Facebook credentials and then you're authenticated and logged in with your Facebook ID. >> With that user name and that password that you already have established. >> Right, with the real name 'cause Facebook is a real name service. >> That's a very good point. >> That's interesting but then, the other thing that's interesting about this is that whatever community stuff that you do on that site then optionally, I think by default but definitely optionally, also shows up in your Facebook account and then all your friends can see what you're doing and the site gets the marketing of basically being on Facebook even if they've done nothing except put on the Facebook Connect function. >> So that'll go out in your newsfeed, you know, like Rafe Needleman just posted a comment on sfgate.com. >> Exactly. >> Oh my goodness. >> Yeah. >> But you don't necessarily want all that information let out. I guess that's up to you then to like put on the filters. >> Yeah. Well, you mean you can use your old ID and log in or not. >> Hmm. >> Or I think with Facebook Connect, you can say whether or not that shows up in your activity stream or not but, you know, if you're trying to participate in the community, maybe you do want your friends to see that I wrote a new review on Yell or on Citysearch or on CNET or whatever. So this is--this is really a powerful project. >> And it sounds obviously very convenient and surprised in a way that this hasn't been done before. >> It has. >> Okay. >> But it hasn't succeeded. >> Why not? >> Microsoft tried this before with Passport. >> Hmm. >> They continue to try again to create the universal log on. There are other universal log on systems, OpenID which is kind of a federated or distributed ownership project. Google just yesterday, at the same time that Facebook was launching Facebook Connect, took the wraps of the--kind of opened up something called Google Friend Connect which is the same thing except they don't have the Facebook angle. They have Orchid in other places but it's not that big here in the use. >> Sure. Hmm. >> So you can now log onto Google Friend Connect sites with your Google ID which again is just as ubiquitous as your Facebook ID, globally more so. So there's a big battle going on right now for kind of the universal log on and whether it's Facebook or Google or OpenID or whatever, it's gonna be really interesting as people try to--'cause if you own the log on, then you know what people are doing. >> Right. >> And you can monetize that informations about Facebook if--for all these sites that are using Facebook Connect. Facebook knows that they're doing and all these users are--all the user stuff that people are doing Facebook knows. >> Absolutely and that's what's so convenient at one hand but then frighteningly scary on the other hand. >> Yeah. It really is. It really is. >> Yeah. >> So don't log on to a porn site with your Facebook ID. You don't wanna do that. >> Not unless you want all 500 of your friends to know about it. >> Exactly. Yeah. >> It also seems like this is good reason to create maybe a more complicated password or something just to keep your privacy protected so that one person can't figure out your password and then just create all sorts of log ins on their behalf. >> Yeah, it does create a single point of failure if--if your password is breached but it also puts a lot of trust in the sites that are using that their security is up so your passwords don't get hacked off those sites. So there are some security things. It does put a lot of--because it's that single system, it does mean that everybody [background music] kinda has to play by the rules or could get in secure. >> Yeah. Well, I look forward to playing with. I'm sure you do. >> We'll hack it on CNET. >> Fantastic. >> Yeah. >> So check that little block, Facebook Connects. Alright. Thank you so much Rafe Needleman >> Thank you. >> I'm Kara Tsuboi. We'll see you on the next Daily Debrief. [ Music ]