Facebook rolls out support for OpenID logins
Facebook has taken steps in the past to promote sharing identities across different social networks, with its own Facebook Connect and its membership on the OpenID board, and it just took one more big leap by allowing Facebook logins via OpenID. If you have an OpenID from a provider like Google, you can now login automatically to Facebook. You can also register for Facebook using a Gmail account, which Facebook is hoping will boost its membership numbers.According to the Developer Blog, users who register with OpenID are more likely to become active Facebook users. That means Facebook has every reason to support OpenID, even though it competes in some ways with Facebook Connect. The reason Facebook initially limited registration to workplaces and Universities was that those emails could fairly reliably verify a user's identity. It's nice to see that OpenID has achieved the same level of legitimacy.












Comments
5
Subscribe to commentswrabbitMay 19th 2009 7:46PM
Okay, maybe it's different, but I think registering with google account was available a while back.
When I signed up, which was about a year ago I think, I did it through an invite from a friend in my gmail account. And this is where it gets kinda funny (in a bit of a scary way) - when I clicked the invite link my facebook account was created using my gmail address and my _gmail password_ - that got me a bit worried - how the heck do they know my gmail password?
Still, the account creation process was very slick - it pulled all my contacts from gmail and showed me all those that had facebook accounts. Basically after literally 2 clicks (1 - confirm account creation, 2 - invite friends from contact list) I had the whole account pretty much setup.
So now, I'm thinking that if there was already some sort of "hidden" openid integration at that time, that's how they could get my gmail pass and contacts from gmail just like that.
mobyMay 21st 2009 12:53AM
I'm very happy about this. I've always thought that vendors should support a core group of universal log-ins and allow users to use (choose) the log-in method of their choice.
I just tied my existing myopenid account to my FB profile and it was seamless and worked flawlessly
Jash SayaniMay 22nd 2009 8:13AM
1 Login to rule them all ! - Open ID.
Then, what the hell is FB Connect for ?!!?
SpookyETMay 24th 2009 12:45PM
Facebook Connect is OpenID. They advertise a branded button instead of giving users their OpenID URL. I find this annoying due to the NASCAR effect that is created around a login box. I wrote an article on why passwords are stupid and why we should embrace OpenID, and I have commented that Facebook's implementation is lacking.
SpookyETMay 24th 2009 11:26AM
I forgot to link the Facebook Connect my take on OpenID and Facebook Connect http://spookyet.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/passwords-are-stupid