Facebook Connect Connecting the Connected

Since Facebook's launch of their new Connect service, thousands of Web sites have adopted it as an alternative to the likes of Windows Live ID, OpenID, and Google Friend Connect. This one is actually in the perfect position to win. Facebook Connect is incredibly easy to use; Facebook has over 130 million active monthly users; and people obviously trust the site with the most intimate of their data, otherwise they wouldn't have 130 million active users.

Facebook Connect allows sites that use the API to access the users Facebook profile information and post information about their activity on the Web sites utilizing Connect to their Facebook profiles, all the while the user maintains total control over the data being shared. In one word - Brilliant. Everybody uses Facebook, so why wouldn't they use their Facebook account to log into other Web sites they use as well?

The only thing that could conceivably stop people from using it, and in an important way weaving Facebook into the very fabric of the Internet, would be privacy concerns. Unlike OpenID, which is really the only log-in solution to solve this very problem, Facebook would be at the center of everything rather than a number of different organizations all overseeing the service. In a perfect world, Facebook might do something like enlisting the help of other trusted technology corporations to help maintain and operate Connect in order to decentralize it, but I'm doubtful that would ever happen. No matter what, Facebook Connect might just be the key to the single sign-on.