Let me start by rewinding to November of last year when Facebook launched Beacon. Beacon was an application that pulled data from external websites and connected them to your Facebook account so you could share more information with your friends. Yes, believe it or not, it is possible to share EVEN MORE information via Facebook. The concept was great – it pulled information about what you were doing on the web into your Facebook account. So if you recently purchased a book from Amazon it would show up in your feed. The problem was how Facebook approached launch, there was no warning or opt in/opt out and they exposed people’s personal information without their consent. Members felt blindsided and many had their holiday gift shopping exposed, needless to say people were not happy.  Like any thriving social network, the community immediately acted by creating a group demanding that Facebook no longer publish their activity from other websites. In less than ten days, this group gained 50,000 members. After much public scrutiny (and a few lawsuits) Facebook withdrew the program.

Recently they decided to try this again with Facebook Connect, this time keeping much closer tabs on all the privacy outings.  Davin Morin, a lead developer at Facebook, wrote in his blog post about Connect “we believe the next evolution of data portability is about much more than data. It’s about giving users the ability to take their identity and friends with them around the web, while being able to trust that their information is always up to date and always protected by their privacy settings.”

Facebook Connect takes the idea of social connectivity (and social suicide) to a whole new level. It allows members to log onto other web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. For example, reviews are probably more valuable to you when they come from people you know and trust. With Connect you can go to CNET and filter the reviews to see just those of your friends. Connect also allows you to broadcast your actions on those sites to friends on Facebook. I’m a little apprehensive about this part – there are just some things you don’t want to share with your entire Facebook network. Case and point, I bought Twilight tickets from Fandango a few weeks ago (OK, I lied, it was opening night) and when I signed onto Facebook post purchase, I noticed that my mini feed said “Carrie purchased Twilight tickets from Fandango.” What? I can’t tell you how quickly that was deleted from my feed!  

So what’s the value in this? For starters, it’s free. Absolutely no money is exchanged between Facebook and the companies using the Connect tool. More importantly, think of all the detailed information Facebook has about its users: their real identities, what they like and dislike, who their friends are, what their friends like and dislike, their relationship status, their location, and the list goes on and on. If websites use this data in the right way they can deliver more targeted, more effective ads….ultimately allowing them to charge a premium for ad space. Not to mention that it’s free advertising for Fandango (and Twilight) when their logo shows up in my mini feed.