Facebook Connect Tracks Friends

Facebook is looking to resurrect its Beacon platform, this time with a little less controversy. Dubbed Facebook Connect, the company describes the new service as the next iteration of the Facebook platform that allows users to connect their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site.This opens the door for third-party Web sites to implement and offer more Facebook features, such as showing a user which of their friends also have accounts on a site.

“In a certain way, this is the return of Facebook Beacon,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “The difference is Beacon was an advertising program. If you took some sort of action on a third-party site while you were signed into Facebook, that action would be broadcast back to your friends. People got upset about it because they weren’t fully aware they were exposed in that way.”

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Add comment December 2nd, 2008