Fast Company’s website had a feature on Monday wherein eight experts predicted the direction of Web 2.0 for 2009. Of particulary interest to me was the response from Mary Hodder:
“The future of social media is user’s owning their data, deciding who to send it to. Look for more companies that currently host the user’s identity to have less control over that, as things like Open ID take over and more companies try to compete by giving users more control over themselves. Look for ways users can own their own data, and companies that might offer that, sort of like a personal information bank. The changes may seem subtle but I think we’ll see companies now, like Facebook, who try to be everything to you: your bank account for info, your identity, your tools for publishing, and your bar/restaurant for socializing, having to give up some of those roles or hold them less powerfully. And I don’t think it’s natural for one company to hold all that power. It leaves you with very little control over your online self. (emphasis mine)
I very much disagree with the idea. In fact, I had been working on a draft of a post about Facebook Connect, the extra-site login API that the company has recently unveiled, which stated pretty much the opposite of Hodder.
To begin, I disagree with the assertion that Facebook will ‘try to be everything for you’. That represents a clear misunderstanding of what Connect is and is trying to be, at least to the best of my knowledge.
The service is an attempt to open up the Facebook login process to other services across the web. From the consumer’s perspective, this means using the same account to access a video-hosting site, a variety of stores, etc. If successful, this would be a huge upgrade in functionality over the existing scheme of requiring separate accounts for each of these sites.
In recent years, sites have simply asked for an e-mail address and password, which has simplified the process to a certain degree. However, I’m sure that many people use the same password across sites, which is less than ideal for security purposes. I do it too often to simplify my online life, but the thought of many different companies hosting a sort of ‘universal password’ for all of my accounts is pretty unsettling.
Facebook Connect is an attempt to adress this issue. But, as Hodder notes, the OpenID system an alternative solution. To Hodder, the fact that it is an open-source solution means that it is not only inherently better, but destined to succeed. There are good arguments regarding the former point, but I don’t really understand the logic of the latter.
I have long believed that something will come around to fill the void left by disparate login systems. It’s simply too big a niche to leave unfulfilled.
And it isn’t as if it’s a huge technical hurdle. Really, the only thing preventing this from happening already is that consumers and sites have yet to agree on, and adopt a system. Facebook seems poised (although not uniquely so–more on that later) to establish itself as the ‘login leader’.
* * *
The first reason for this is the sheer popularity of the ‘book. Since April, it has been the single most popular social networking site on the web. This means that the company controls a significant amount of market share, which gives it a competitive advantage in terms of convincing site administrators to select it as the (default) login system on external sites.
The second reason is related to the first: it is the most popular social networking site. There are several advantages to be found in social networks. Such sites will be particularly attractive to external site administrators because they allow for more efficient information distribution. There are surely millions of Facebook users who haven’t yet begun to use the ’share’ or ‘post’ features of the site. Increasingly seamless operations will presumably lower that number, which is a big thing for developers trying to get more visitors. On the consumer side of the equation, Facebook is perhaps the single most important internet destination. The feedback loop of user activity that has been building for the past several years has made users loyal and regular ‘customers’. This is important because it appears that, for the time being, very few people are going to ditch Facebook for other services.
Facebook thus has a form of monopoly on registrations and logins. This is to say that Facebook Connect has the potential to penetrate other websites, but the opposite isn’t true. Were regular Facebook users to adopt OpenID names, the ‘book wouldn’t recognize them.
Users want the simplicity of a single login ‘identity’. Users also highly value access to Facebook. If enough sites offer Facebook Connect, users will select it over OpenID.
And to reiterate my first point, integrating with Facebook offers distinct advantages to developers and administrators of outside sites, because it allows their sites more seamless access to Facebook users.
OpenID stands at a huge disadvantage.
* * *
The future cannot be predicted, and it is entirely possible that I am wrong about this. MySpaceID seems like a good possibility, if only because it’s got Google onboard. The combined user bases of the two companies will certainly be a legitmate challenger to Connect. There are plenty of pros and cons when comparing this with connect. So many, in fact, that they go beyond the scope of this post…
There are a variety of other contenders, but the important point to take home is that they will never be able to access Facebook.
* * *
This post was inspired by the comments of Mary Hodder, which suggests that ownership of user information is ‘unnatural’, and accordingly will not happen. I feel that such comments are reflective of a mode of thinking that is exceptionally common today. This mode is a sort of ‘cult of openness’. The success of Wikipedia and Web 2.0 have given rise to this notion that it is no longer possible for any institution or organization to ever be better or more efficient than the disorganized masses.
This method of thinking is outlined (but by no means wholly accepted) in Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. It is fully hyped in Wikinomics. And it can be found in every recess of the blogosphere.
Whether this is an overreaction to the success of Web 2.0, or reflective of some form of deeply-rooted libertarianism in the minds of promoters of the web, I cannot say. But it certainly gets ridiculously over-zealous at times, and there are countless examples of people having clouded judgment as a result.
This conclusion is probably just a rambling critique of libertarianism in general, but the parallels here are too clear for me to resist. Hodder argues that because one alternative appears better and ‘more natural’, it will be the dominant one in the end. But she’s ignoring that dominance will arise as the result of the behavior of users, who aren’t necessarily going to gravitate towards the ‘better’ or ‘natural’ result. Sound familiar?
0 Responses to “Facebook Connect and OpenID (plus bonus desultory ramblings!)”