When Facebook Connect launched three weeks ago many were awaiting the rapid spread of third-party support around the web. As of today, there are over 100,000 active users across Facebook Connect applications. While some of the users are overlapping, it’s a significant milestone for the service. So far there have been few large supporters, Joost being the largest so far. According to our statistics, Joost is about to surpass 13,000 Facebook Connect enabled subscribers. Vimeo is a distant second with around 6,000 Connect enabled subscribers but adoption at Vimeo doesn’t appear to be slowing.
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Lala is a small music streaming service in comparison to more prominent sites like Last.fm, but Eric Eldon reports that Lala may be leading the bid for a partnership with Facebook for a streaming music option.

Having an integrated streaming music service is something Facebook has been planning for some time, and has reportedly been feeling out a number of music services including Project Playlist for a partnership. What Facebook wants is an on-demand streaming music offering that’s similar to MySpace Music. But as VentureBeat points out, that’s not the type of service Lala currently has.
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Earlier this week I noticed that one of my friends had made their Facebook profile photos no longer visible. I wasn’t sure if this was because they had put me on a restricted friend list or if they had simply removed their profile photos. I awkwardly asked my friend why I had been blocked from viewing his photos and he said that he blocked everybody so his boss wouldn’t see his less professional photographs. Unfortunately my friend didn’t understand the power of Facebook’s custom privacy settings.
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I think we’ve known that eMarketer has been using some funny math for a while now, hence their restated revenue projections for both MySpace an Facebook. Despite their questionable methods, Facebook’s revenue estimates for both 2008 and 2009 are still somewhat surprising. Earlier this year Mark Zuckerberg estimated that revenues would be somewhere around $325 million for this year but eMarketer suggests that revenue will actually be closer to $210 million.
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Right after I posted about the new Facebook Connect feature for Disqus, Chris Saad sent me an instant message about their implementation of Facebook Connect. JS-Kit comments enables it so that you only need to log in once via Facebook Connect and it will instantly keep you logged in via any site you go to. It’s technically feasible to do this but it clearly violates Facebook’s terms of service. With new services launching every day, Facebook is going to need to clearly articulate what policy they have on widgets implementing Connect services.
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When Facebook Connect launched over two weeks ago I wrote about their widget policy being overly restrictive. The result was that widgets couldn’t be developed efficiently as users would be forced to upload a cross-domain receiver file after creating the application within Facebook. I was in the process of developing my own widget at the time and was under the impression that the cross domain receiver file must exist on the third-party’s website.
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We have a top holiday Facebook application list scheduled to be published later today, and it’s been ruined thanks to Facebook’s ban of the Playlist app.  It’s not entirely Facebook’s fault–the RIAA had made a request for the Playlist app, which allows users to listen to songs, create playlists and share them on their profiles, to be taken down last summer.

With three of the four major music labels currently suing Playlist, the pressure from the RIAA for total compliance is weighing heavily on Playlist, and now on Facebook too.  Despite striking a deal with Sony BMG earlier this month, Playlist is still in a lot of hot water.  
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When you log in to a site with Facebook Connect and it prompts you for your email and password, how do you know the site you are viewing is Facebook? This question crossed my mind earlier this afternoon and my conclusion was that there’s little information provided that ensures you are viewing a Facebook page. The only thing that you can see that guarantees you are at Facebook is the URL provided in the browser window (as pictured below).
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Another case of the long arm of the law reaching into Facebook. Two were arrested in Gatson County, North Carolina after a party posted on Facebook led to the police raiding the party and charging two adults present for underage drinking, according to WCNC.

Steve Haney, Jr. and Melissa Wilson, the home owners, were reportedly home during a party planned and posted on Facebook, where alcohol was provided. So what tipped off the police in the first place?
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When Facebook launched their platform last year, one of the primary drivers behind many developers decision to launch on the platform was the much prized position of being placed in the news feed. Instantly application stories flooded the news feed becoming one of the primary sources of spam on the website. Since then it appears that Facebook has adjusted the news feed algorithm so that practically no application stories are displayed.

One application developer I spoke with said that they’ve seen one news feed story in the feed in the past 30 days. While the live news feed is flooded with application stories, very few of them seem to be making it to the main feed. If Facebook Connect sites get the same sort of exposure, there will be less incentive for sites to integrated. Granted, Facebook claims that Facebook Connect has increased engagement on developers’ sites but is that enough of an incentive for implementing the service?
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