In 2008 Facebook launched “Connect“, a way to identify yourself to sites, and also enable interactions between a site an your Facebook profile. And boy, what a success it is. While the add on features such as “Like” and the more recent “Send” is handy for sharing, it is perhaps the identity portion which is the most valuable. What started off as a simple way to share information has become the defacto online identification method.
Most “with it” sites these days rather use Facebook Connect (or at least Disqus which can slot into Facebook) as a way to identify yourself, which sure beats having to register yourself everytime you arrive at a new website. It is also a great way of verifying whether someone is indeed human – which has a number of advantages as well. Many sites have started to use Facebook Comments as its primary registering method for comments, which in my opinion has lead to much better comments.
Take a look at Techcruch, a site that has always had a LOT of trolls who merely posted nonsense and inflammatory content. Since TechCrunch switched to FB Comments, the number of comments have decreased, but the quality of the comments were much better. Many people believe that the anonomous vail of the internet allows us to be more honest, where others believe that having your identity linked with your comment post makes you feel more accountable, which leads to more respectable comments. Horses for courses I guess. That is why BandwidthBlog gives you a choice – you can keep on using Disqus, which uses Facebook login, or anonymous posting if you are feeling snarky…
But on to the infographic – once again the folks at Jess3 did this great visualization to show off how Facebook Connect has evolved into one of the top social widgets used by sites:
Oh by the way, you can “Like” Bandwidth Blog on Facebook as well 🙂
Infographic Source: TechCrunch
