Stand back and get ready social web users, Facebook has officially opened the single sign-on technology floodgates.  Facebook’s ‘not-so-under-the-wraps’ Connect feature is now live, and can be implemented by any site via the company’s web developer platform.

Facebook says that 100+ sites have added the technology during the pre-launch testing phase, and/or plan on implementing the tech in the coming weeks.  You may have heard of just a few of them: Digg, Gawker, Vimeo, CNET, and several major universities.

Facebook’s 125 million (gave or take a few…but who’s counting?) users can now participate on any one of these sites by signing in with their Facebook ID.  This Facebook login will then in turn re-broadcast their actions on this site to their friends within Facebook.  Facebook ensures that users will have privacy controls so that only approved info gets the re-broadcast (‘cause I’d hate for my comments on imalumberjackandidontcare.com to be rebroadcast).

Connect will also assist in matching up your Facebook friends on this external site.  I.e. you may not have known that Kaveh Rastegar is also a member of Vimeo, and enjoys indie filmmakers.  Connect will ensure that the two of you also have the options to be friends on Vimeo.  Likewise, if Kaveh posts a comment on a video, and logs in via Connect, his comments will then show up in his news feed for all his friends to see and comment on as well.

However.  Having these open standards does carry a bit of a price tag.  The social data that is collected by using these interacts gets fed back into Facebook.  By utilizing the Connect technology, the site owner agrees to share any data it gathers about users who use Connect with Facebook – and Facebook alone.  Hmmm.  Facebook has found itself in this tub of hot water before (think Beacon Advertising System), is this just another attempt at skirting the issue by having third-party sites collect the data?  Hopefully, I’m way off here.

This technology is nothing new, as OpenID and Open Stack are currently in existence, but have been a bit late to the party, held up by a not-so-hot user experience and security.  OpenID and Open Stack are a set of open source technologies being developed by Google, Yahoo!, MySpace, Plaxo, and other social sites that would allow the end user a larger system of portable data.  Truth be told, I’m a big fan of Facebook, and could easily see them getting this one just right.

And apparently, I’m not the only one.  In a recent press release, Facebook states that,

“two out of three new registrations at participating sites were generated through Facebook Connect during the testing phase.”

66%!  Wow!  And the sticky sweet Facebook goodness doesn’t stop at the registration page.

“users who logged in using Facebook Connect were 50 percent more likely to participate socially on a website than non-Facebook Connect users once logged in.”

Dang!  Those are some mighty big numbers.  While the jury is still out on whether Connect can deliver all that it promises, it’s looking mighty good thus far.  Let’s keep an eye on this one.

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