It’s not happening overnight but it is happening. We are slowly handing the keys of our Web over to Facebook and other than a small vocal minority no-one seems to care.
It’s not something that is all that obvious but Facebook has all the pieces in place to hijack the Web from under us and we all seem to be willing to jack those pieces into the very fabric of the Web – our blogs and websites.
I am still ambivalent about the whole Like button thing even though I am using them over on WinExtra; and still debating their inclusion here and at Braincell Soup (my more artsy fartsy blog), I can see them quickly becoming the underpinnings of our socialized web. However they aren’t the real danger as are the other social plugins from Facebook.
The real danger I feel is the adoption of the Facebook Login connections that are springing up all over the place like some bad weed infestation. Ya there’s a smattering of OpenID type login options as well as Twitter but I have started to notice sites that use Facebook social login as the primary way for people to login to sites.
Prior to things like Twitter and Facebook site registration was always handled in-house which meant that people usually had to remember multiple login usernames and password which admittedly as a user is real pain in the ass. Now though services like Facebook through some slick salesmanship have convinced a growing number of bloggers and site owners to save their users from frustration by hooking into the Facebook way of doing things.
On the surface this seems like a great idea. One less headache for bloggers and site owners as well as a bonus for the users. No more having to remember all those logins just use your Facebook profile for everything.
Great idea but there are two things that really bother me about this.
First off by going this route you are basically handing over your complete membership database to Facebook. This may not seem like much when it comes to most sites or blogs but what if you have a site or blog that uses that database for marketing purposes? What if you have a newsletter that is an integral part of your blog or site?
Suddenly to reach those people you have to return to Facebook and use things like their Fan Pages or Groups because that is where all your readers / members have their contact information. You’ve for all intents and purposes farmed out your extras to Facebook.
The other thing that bothers me about this rush to use Facebook social logging in and registering is what about all those people who don’t use Facebook and don’t or won’t use it? Have you just limited your site to a specific segment of the web by going this route?
In our rush to be all cool and everything by implementing these great new social tools from Facebook are we just putting up a different type of Private Members Only sign?
Are we really benefiting our readers by becoming just another outpost for Facebook?
Who really is benefiting here?
The blog owner?
The site owner?
The users?
Or Facebook.
