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Archive for October 1st, 2007

Facebook to Release a Passport-like Common Logon?

Monday, October 1st, 2007

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With yesterday’s announcement of the statusUpdate API call in Facebook, my thoughts have been going wild on what this means. This was clearly done for Twitter and other status update sites out there. I can also see some cool uses for it in other applications too.

One thing this does hint at, whether Facebook is thinking about it or not, is the possibility of a common logon system similar to Microsoft’s Passport or OpenID. The next step Facebook should take is open their authentication system up in the API. Currently, you can get a user logged into Facebook via the API. Facebook now needs to package this and market it as a complete solution to sites like Twitter to get them to base their user profiles off of Facebook profiles. I would prefer this method personally, as I only need to update my profile in one place (Facebook), and then I can use Twitter for all my other status needs.

Facebook Releases Status Updates via the API

Monday, October 1st, 2007

Finally! The moment has come! Soon you’ll be able to just update Twitter and magically your Facebook profile will update to what your current Twitter status is. This is big news, and great for Twitter, as now users can focus their updates in Twitter, what it was made for, and not worry about updating in a million places.

I have yet to see the feature on the Twitter app, but it was only released yesterday, so I expect to see it soon. The only main disadvantage I see to the feature is now when you send @so-and-so your Facebook friends won’t really know what you’re talking about. Do I see an acquisition down the road by Facebook?