Yesterday Apple made a huge announcement that Twitter would be deeply integrated into the company’s new operating system. How does this impact Facebook?
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Another legal victory for Facebook: A man pled guilty to blackmailing a 14-year-old girl through contact initiated on the social network, in a case called the first of its kind to be prosecuted in Northern California.

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When you forget your password for your email account, a few standard security questions will give you a chance to prove your identity. If this information is publicly displaye anywhere on Facebook, you’re vulnerable to hacking. Here’s a cautionary tale about exactly that.  Read the rest of this entry »

One of the key value propositions of Facebook Connect is the ability to avoid having to remember numerous passwords to log on to different sites. However, the Obama administration appears to be interested in accomplishing the same thing.

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In a new study published today by Gigya, Facebook was found to be the most popular third-party login service across all sites, capturing a whopping 46 percent of the market. Also somewhat surprising was that Twitter apparently captures 45% of third-party logins within media sites. What’s becoming increasingly clear is that despite Facebook’s dominance, providing a variety of third-party login services is important to capture all new visitors to a site.
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While many developers believe that opening up access to user emails may corrupt the Facebook Platform ecosystem, the company appears to be moving forward with the transition. Dan Peguine of HonestyBox forwarded us a screenshot last week of a prompt which asks the user to offer their email to the application developer (pictured below). While this is most likely an initial test, it’s clear that Facebook will soon grant developers access to user emails. If things stay on schedule, this could be the largest implementation of an OpenID-like authentication system ever.
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Over the past few years Facebook has grown from a tool for connecting with others to a tool for sharing information with others. This new model is helping Facebook to collect more relevant information about consumers and is slowly changing the advertising world forever. We are in the midst of a shift toward monitoring our digital footprints and Facebook is currently taking the lead in what appears to be a battle for our commercial identities.
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Today, Facebook announced that they have joined the OpenID Foundation. Facebook has long been criticized by those working to build out the “open stack” for not supporting open standards, instead opting to develop their own authorization protocols. Facebook Connect is the current public authentication model that the company is promoting although the Facebook API has provided methods for authentication for a while now.
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