{"id":42,"date":"2008-11-03T13:27:55","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T18:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thinkstick.dreamhosters.com\/?p=42"},"modified":"2008-11-03T13:27:55","modified_gmt":"2008-11-03T18:27:55","slug":"some-thoughts-on-openid-vs-facebook-connect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thinkstick.dreamhosters.com\/2008\/11\/some-thoughts-on-openid-vs-facebook-connect\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Thoughts on OpenID vs. Facebook Connect"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nJohn McCrea of Plaxo has written a cleverly titled guest post on TechCrunchIT, Facebook
\nConnect and OpenID Relationship Status: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Complicated\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a>, where he makes the
\nargument that Facebook Connect is a competing technology to OpenID but the situation
\nis complicated by Facebook developers engaging in discussions with the OpenID. He
\nwrites\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nYou see, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been about a month since the first implementation of Facebook Connect
\nwas <\/em>spotted
\nin the wild <\/em><\/a>over at CBS\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s celebrity gossip site, TheInsider.com. Want
\nto sign up for the site? Click a single button. A little Facebook window pops up to
\nconfirm that you want to connect via your Facebook account. One more click \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re
\ndone. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a new account, a mini profile with your Facebook photo, and access
\nto that subset of your Facebook friends who have also connected their accounts to
\nTheInsider. Oh, and you can have your activities on TheInsider flow into your Facebook
\nnews feed automatically. All that, without having to create and remember a new username\/password
\npair for the site. Why, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just like the vision for OpenID and the Open Stack \u00e2\u20ac\u201c
\nexcept without a single open building block under the hood!<\/em>
\n
\n…
\n
\nAfter the intros, Allen Tom of Yahoo, who organized the event, turned the first
\nsession over Max Engel of MySpace, who in turn suggested an alternative \u00e2\u20ac\u201c why not
\nlet Facebook\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Julie Zhuo kick it off instead? And for the next hour, Julie took us
\nthrough the details of Facebook Connect and the decisions they had to make along the
\nway to get the user interface and user experience just right. It was not just a presentation;
\nit was a very active and engaged discussion, with questions popping up from all over
\nthe room. Julie and the rest of the Facebook team were engaged and eager to share
\nwhat they had learned. <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

\nWhat the heck is going on here? Is Facebook preparing to go the next step of open,
\nswitching from the FB stack to the Open Stack? Only time will tell. But one thing
\nis clear: Facebook Connect is the best thing ever for OpenID (and the rest of the
\nOpen Stack). Why? Because Facebook has set a high bar with Facebook Connect that is
\ninspiring everyone in the open movement to work harder and faster to bring up the
\nquality of the UI\/UX for OpenID and the Open Stack.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThere are a number of points worth discussing from the above excerpt. The first is
\nthe implication that OpenID is an equivalent technology to Facebook Connect. This
\nis clearly not the case. OpenID just allows you to delegate to act of authenticating
\na user to another website so the user doesn't need to create credentials (i.e. username
\n+ password) on your site. OpenID alone doesn't get you the user's profile data nor
\ndoes it allow you to pull in the authenticated user's social graph from the other
\nsite or publish activities to their activity feed. For that, you would need other
\nother "Open brand" technologies like OpenID
\nAttribute Exchange<\/a>, Portable
\nContacts<\/a> and OpenSocial<\/a>.
\nSo it is fairer to describe the contest as Facebook Connect vs. OpenID + OpenID Attribute
\nExchange + Portable Contacts + OpenSocial.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe question then is who should we root for? At the end of the day, I don’t think
\nit makes a ton of sense for websites to have to target umpteen different APIs that
\ndo the same thing instead of targeting one standard implemented by multiple services.
\nSpecifically, it seems ridiculous to me that TheInsider.com will have to code against
\nFacebook Connect to integrate Facebook accounts into their site but code against something
\nelse if they want to integrate MySpace accounts and yet another API if they want to
\nintegrate LinkedIn accounts and so on. This is an area that is crying out for standardization.\n<\/p>\n

\nUnfortunately, the key company providing thought leadership in this area is Facebook
\nand for now<\/u> they are building their solution with proprietary technologies
\ninstead of de jure or de facto ("Open brand") standards. This is unsurprising
\ngiven that it takes three or four different specs in varying states of completeness
\ncreated by different audiences deliver the scenarios they are currently interested
\nin. What is encouraging is that Facebook developers are working with OpenID implementers
\nby sharing their knowledge. However OpenID isn't the only technology needed to satisfy
\nthis scenario and I wonder if Facebook will be similarly engaged with the folks working
\non Portable Contacts and OpenSocial.\n<\/p>\n

\nFacebook Connect is a step in the right direction when it comes to bringing the vision
\nof social
\nnetwork interoperability<\/a> to fruition. The key question is whether we will see effective<\/u> open
\nstandards emerge that will target the same scenarios [which eventually even Facebook
\ncould adopt] or whether competitors will offer their
\nown proprietary alternatives<\/a>? So far it sounds like the latter is happening which
\nmeans unnecessary reinvention of the wheel for sites that want to support "connecting"
\nwith multiple social networking sites.\n<\/p>\n

\nPS: If OpenID
\nphishing<\/a> is a concern now when the user is redirected to the ID provider’s site
\nto login, it seems Facebook Connect is even worse since all it does is provide a pop
\nover. I wonder if this is because the Facebook folks think the phishing concerns are
\noverblown.\n<\/p>\n

\n\"Note\" Now
\nPlaying: 2Pac<\/a> – Mind
\nMade Up (feat. Daz, Method Man & Redman)<\/a> \"Note\"\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n\n\n
Published by <\/td>\n\n\t\t\"Published<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Original source : http:\/\/www.25hoursaday.com\/weblog\/2008\/10\/24\/SomeT…<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John McCrea of Plaxo has written a cleverly titled guest post on TechCrunchIT, Facebook Connect and OpenID Relationship Status: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Complicated\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, where he makes the argument that Facebook Connect is a competing technology to OpenID but the situation is complicated by Facebook developers engaging in discussions with the OpenID. He writes You see, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thinkstick.dreamhosters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thinkstick.dreamhosters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thinkstick.dreamhosters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thinkstick.dreamhosters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thinkstick.dreamhosters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thinkstick.dreamhosters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thinkstick.dreamhosters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thinkstick.dreamhosters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thinkstick.dreamhosters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}