Series on Facebook Connect

Facebook Connect will be a beautiful and revolutionary technology.  It will finally make interoperability between social sites a reality.  And it won't just be Facebook monopolizing or pioneering the effort.  Google Friend Connect, OpenID, and Myspace Data Availability will all compete with it, forcing everyone to be open and interoperable. 

I don't think I can properly verbalize the value and features of Facebook Connect.  This NY Times article is probably the best overview.  What I'll do instead is a series of posts over the next few weeks that highlights actual implementations of Facebook Connect that I'm personally developing.

The first will be for a client of mine in the non-profit space (not a ministry).  The next will be the implementation of FB Connect for MyChurch.  And finally I'll try to gather some conclusions for the local church.

A year ago, churches on facebook were starting to figure out how to create apps on the platform.  A year from now, church websites will have Facebook Connect to allow their members to log in, interact as a community, and then spread their church's message through newsfeeds.

Looking forward to sharing ideas and hearing feedback

-- Joe from MyChurch

Comments

[Leadership Network]

Joe, thanks for kicking off this series! I took a quick look at Facebook Connect and couldn't readily tell what the difference was between Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect. Both are called "Connect", but I have a hunch they're 2 very different things.

[Joe Suh]

Yes, from my understanding, Google's Friend Connect allows sites to add social features through widgets (aka "gadgets"). And then users can logon with their Google/Yahoo/OpenID's (and now Twitter id's). This is different from Facebook Connect which allows users to login to existing social sites using their Facebook credentials.

Google's Friend Connect might make more sense for a church website (ie sites that don't have social features yet, and want to sprinkle them on easily). But I don't know enough about it to write a post :)

[Vietchristian]

I have been trying Google Friend Connect almost a year now. Tools such as GFC or Facebook Connect doesn't do much for my web site until I write an application using them. Not many people like to write comments on my web site. I recently wrote the Bible Quiz and Favorite Bible Verse applications and I see better visitor participation. Please take a look on http://www.vietchristian.com/kinhthanh/en_quiz.asp .