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See What Facebook Connect Looks Like

On Monday, Facebook released a sample site that demonstrates how Facebook Connect (previous coverage), their new authentication methodology for logging into third-party web sites, will work. On the demo site, instead of registering for an account, you’re presented with an option to use Facebook Connect instead. The Facebook team built the site so developers interested in using this technology could see how it works. The source code was provided as well.

The sample site is called The Run Around and it’s just a simple site that lets runners log their runs and chart progress on their workout routines. From the homepage, you’re presented with two options: on the left, you can login with a username and password and on the right, you can click the Facebook Connect button.

Of course, before you can login, you have to register. When you click the link to register, you have the option of filling out the fields to provide your username, password, name, etc. Alternatively, you have the option of clicking Facebook Connect.

When you do so, a dialog box appears and all you need to do is click the “Connect” button to authenticate with the site (assuming you’re already logged in). Note there’s also a checkbox that you can leave checked (the default) or uncheck. It reads: “Let this application publish one line stories without my approval.”

Click the button and you’re in.

Once you’re logged in, you’ll see that your Facebook friends already using the site will already have been added for you. Although you know that’s one of the main purposes of this technology, it’s pretty amazing to think that at last, the tedious process of finding and adding friends will finally be over.

You’ll Never Have To Add Friends Again – You Just Have To Add Them To Facebook

Let’s assume for a minute that Facebook Connect really takes off and is available on every social web site you can think of. If that’s the case, then the only way to really make that friend graph of yours portable and easy to use is to add all of those friends to Facebook…does anyone have a problem with that?

Not long ago, Facebook established itself as a place to share your personal activities on the web. Here, people share family photos, videos from social gatherings, and post personal comments on each other’s walls. Facebook, at least back in the beginning, was a social hangout – not some place where you would want to “friend” all of your colleagues, or heaven forbid, your boss. In fact, people using Facebook tended to use it for personal – as in “real life” – friendships only. Not a place where they friended everyone under the sun. (That was MySpace, if you’ll recall.)

But on the new social web, nothing is really private anymore. People are lifestreaming their every action and friending complete strangers on sites like Twitter and FriendFeed solely because they share the same interests. If those relationships are valuable enough to you that you want them to be portable, then you’ll need to start friending everyone on Facebook, too. Since that’s the case, it looks like you might want to dig into those privacy settings after all.

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