Facebook Becomes More Open with OpenID Support

You are here: News > News > Facebook Becomes More Open with OpenID Support

» IT Security NEWS

» 18 May 2009

Facebook has been considering the potential of supporting the OpenID login standard ever since OpenID first became popular. The so-called "open decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity" standard has been on the social networking site's radar for a few years now, and it's only recently that it actually expressed interest in building support for the service.

The successful social network may finally be abandoning its infamous closed-set, "members only" approach with its Monday announcement of becoming an OpenID "relying partly". The company at long last decided to deploy support for the universal login standard despite the fact that its own Facebook Connect was developed to be OpenID's propriety competitor.

Nevertheless, after joining the OpenID Foundation on February and announcing its intentions to use the OpenID standard on Monday, it's become apparent that Facebook believes the two companies can work better as partners than as competitors. However, the irony behind Facebook's OpenID support and its usually walled-garden tactics (that makes it the most isolated of all the major social networks aside from LinkedIn) is not lost to the Internet community.

Actually, many people across the blogosphere were pleasantly surprised by the move because Facebook has arguably become a very profitable business due to its isolationist policies and practices. The social networking company is so far ahead of its competitors in terms of market share that it should have no interest in cooperating with other organizations for the common good. This is the kind of move that can be expected from more interoperable networks that are far behind Facebook. That's not to say that this wasn't a good idea, but it was truly unexpected.

New users of Facebook will now be able to make accounts using their Gmail ID, while existing users should be able to link their ID with their Facebook accounts and therefore log in with their Gmail ID or any other OpenID account that supports "automatic login." The upside to this is that a user doesn't need to remember different account names, passwords, and the like. You can now just login with your preferred OpenID supporting account without worrying about getting an exclusive login for Facebook.

As of this writing, nothing OpenID-related is working on Facebook just yet. However, you can expect OpenID interoperability with Facebook in the next few days or so, because Facebook has had a good track record when it comes to fulfilling their commitments and announcements. Because of this precedent, expect Facebook's competitors to start accepting OpenID as well by the end of the summer.

Click Here For Web Shop

Reviews of SecPoint.com