Facebook Extends Its Reach

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: December 2, 2008 6:14:07 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Facebook Extends Its Reach

[Note:  This item comes from friend John McMullen.  DLH]

From: "John F. McMullen" <johnmac13 () gmail com>
Date: December 2, 2008 3:06:04 PM PST
To: "johnmac's living room" <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
Cc: "Dewayne Hendricks" <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: Facebook Extends Its Reach

From the New York Times -- <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/technology/internet/01facebook.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all 
>

Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web

By BRAD STONE

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Facebook, the Internet's largest social network,  
wants to let you take your friends with you as you travel the Web. But  
having been burned by privacy concerns in the last year, it plans to  
keep close tabs on those outings.

Facebook Connect, as the company's new feature is called, allows its  
members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook  
identification and see their friends' activities on those sites. Like  
Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced  
and then withdrew last year after it raised a hullabaloo over privacy,  
Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions  
on those sites to their friends on Facebook.

In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this  
service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and  
The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy  
network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.

Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in  
Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their  
users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least  
some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying  
information again and again on different sites.

Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence  
of a new "social Web," because chatter among friends will infiltrate  
even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.

For example, a person might alert his Facebook friends to the fact  
that he is watching a video on CBS.com and invite them to join him  
there to watch together and discuss the video as it plays.

"Everyone is looking for ways to make their Web sites more social,"  
said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer. "They can  
build their own social capabilities, but what will be more useful for  
them is building on top of a social system that people are already  
wedded to."

MySpace, Yahoo and Google have all announced similar programs this  
year, using common standards that will allow other Web sites to reduce  
the work needed to embrace each identity system. Facebook, which is  
using its own data-sharing technology, is slightly ahead of its rivals.

The effort is particularly important for Facebook, which once  
represented the seemingly boundless promise of the Web 2.0 boom. It  
desperately wants to make certain the other Web companies do not  
supplant it and become the most popular hub for online socializing.

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