This morning at the Le Web conference in Paris, Ethan Beard presented a discussion about “Connecting the Social Web”. During the conversation, Ethan presented a number of statistics including that over 60 million users use Facebook Connect each month, and more than 80,000 websites have implemented the service since it first launched to all developers one year ago. It’s an impressive stat for a service which is essentially one year old.

Ethan also shared statistics that we’ve written about in the past regarding websites that have seen dramtically increased engagement after implementing Facebook Connect. The Huffington Post, for example, saw a 500 percent “increase in Facebook referrals after implementing Facebook Connect”. While I’m sure there are other statistics related to Facebook Connect, the total number of monthly users is clearly an important metric to keep track of.

As Facebook continues to open up and expand beyond the previously “walled garden”, it’s important to keep track of how many users are regularly interacting with other sites through Facebook Connect. With approximately 17 percent of Facebook users interacting with a Facebook Connect sites each month, there is still a ways to go. Facebook likes to always present the statistic that 50 percent of its user base logs into the site every month.

As Connect is implemented on other sites, I’m sure the user engagement metrics will continue to grow.

Update
I’ve posted a copy of a Facebook Connect slideshow highlighting the past year below.