With the news coming out of F8 this week, it was hard to not get caught up in the enthusiasm for Facebook Connect, the new authentication methodology which will allow you to login to third-party web sites using your Facebook ID and port your friend graph from Facebook with you. On the one hand, you have to admit this is revolutionary. The web will be transformed from the still (somewhat) closed system it is today, to a massively social experience - it's the "always logged-in internet." On the other hand, the company bringing this web to us is Facebook, the same people who had to be told by their users why Beacon was a huge mistake. Do you trust Facebook to control the next iteration of the web?

Facebook Connect

As Facebook Connect grows and is adopted by more sites, it will push your social graph to the far corners of the web, out to places where it doesn't even exist today - that is, places like the corporate web sites whose own attempts at creating social networks of their own were a waste of money. These businesses never needed a social network - they need to tap into your social graph and Facebook Connect gives them the power to do so.

Through the seamless Facebook Connect integration, sites can access your Facebook account details and friend graph and move that data back and forth between their site and Facebook. For example, people commenting on a blog using the Moveable Type platform will be able to login via Facebook Connect. Their comment will link to their Facebook profile and the commenting activity itself will make its way back into your activity feed. On Digg, another site adopting Facebook Connect, you can login with your Facebook ID and your digging activity is returned to Facebook, too.

Why Facebook Connect Could Win This

A large majority of today's more mainstream users have a Facebook account and still, the site grows. Although MySpace still remains king in the U.S., Facebook is quickly closing that gap, having grown 40% over the last year. But worldwide, Facebook officially caught up to MySpace in April 2008 in terms of monthly worldwide visitors - around 115 million per site per month (source: Comscore).

Although Facebook Connect is just one example of this new trend involving the portability of our social graphs, it already has a leg up on both Google's Friend Connect and MySpace's implementation of OpenID.

With Google's Friend Connect - not even fully launched yet - they're relying on the power of their brand. But although the site is a household name now, that doesn't mean that everyone has a Google account or a friend graph there. Like Microsoft and their "Passport" (now Live ID) initiative, the largest source for collecting user accounts is via their webmail offerings. For those that don't use Gmail or any of Google's other customized services requiring a login, there's no value to Google's Friend Connect because there's no friend graph there. You would be creating an account to have the sake of the account. This doesn't appeal to anyone.

As for OpenID, as much as we're thrilled to see it finally making its way onto huge web sites like MySpace, it will still have to overcome the "user education" issue. A mainstream web user will not know what an OpenID is (and will often not take the initiative to find out). But they will be able to wrap their heads around Facebook Connect. "Login with your Facebook ID" - that's pretty much as straightforward as it comes. It's unfortunate, but you have to acknowledge the fact that if OpenID can't dumb down their concept enough for the "everyman," it may not be able to reign dominant across the web. Like Dick says on the Identity 2.0 blog: "...frankly -- typing in a URL is pretty geeky to most users."

Why Facebook Connect Could Be Dangerous

Unlike with OpenID, Facebook Connect put the power of the social web into the hands of one company. One private company. Not only that, but a company that's known for rolling out changes without so much as a warning to its users then having to react to the ensuing uproar.

Even the introduction of the Mini-Feed was protested upon launch. And Beacon - the advertisement system that sent data from external web sites back to Facebook, telling your friends about your purchases on 40+ partner sites - was literally a fiasco. It launched before there was a way to even opt-out.

In the past, user privacy on Facebook seemed always seemed to be an afterthought. Although their direction appears to be changing a bit now - recent updates to Facebook today make sure to cover how your privacy is going to be affected - it's only because they've learned to cater to their users' demands. It's harder to believe that it's because they genuinely care.

Facebook has always known that their value - that is, their monetary value - is selling off bits and pieces of your privacy to advertisers. The "real you" on Facebook is a holy grail for marketers. Now, with the power to spread that to sites across the entire web, Facebook will need to figure out how to cash in. In the process, they may again make another misstep. The problem is that this time it might not be something as innocuous as the video you rented at Blockbuster that finds its way back to your Facebook profile. As more of the corporate and business-oriented web adopts Friend Connect, the greater the chance for privacy intrusion.

Conclusion

What do you think about this new social web? Do you see Facebook Connect as having a chance to win this all? Or will it be Google Friend Connect or OpenID? Or perhaps all three can co-exist peacefully?

Twitter Anti-Spam Bot Punishes Community Managers and Causes Follower Counts to Drop

Did you notice a big drop in your Twitter follower numbers yesterday? It seems that the Twitter team recently decided to step up their Twitter spammer detection, and, in typical Twitter fashion, their algorithm sent the service haywire, leading to yet another sighting of the Fail Whale while the issue was resolved. Meanwhile, Twitterers everywhere were in an uproar over their lost follower counts.

Spam Detection Goes Too Far

Earlier this week, ZDNet reported that many Twitter users were no longer able to add followers thanks to the new limits put in place to discourage spamming. Unfortunately, this action caused some major trouble for community managers, like Pandora's Lucia Willow, for example, who stated her case over on Get Satisfaction. In addition to Pandora, Comcast, Jet Blue, and several others were also affected. In order to add new followers, they had to delete older ones - not a good idea for those that want to stay tuned into their community.

In addition to causing problems for community managers, there were even some cases of follower limits placed on those that had a 1:1 Twitter ratio. And although Twitter has not confirmed the cause of the dropped follower counts, it's likely that the the new anti-spam bot is to blame.

As we wrote earlier this year, many companies are using Twitter for customer service, meaning that they will be following people at higher rates than regular Twitter users due to the fact that they follow back those that follow them. This is certainly a legitimate way to use the service and one that should not be punished through a blind algorithm that can't distinguish a community manager from a spammer.

While we appreciate the fact that the Twitter team is fighting the spam problem (an "ongoing battle," says Biz Stone), you would think that they would have considered this potential ramification to implementing their new pattern-detecting technology. It's almost as if Twitter themselves do not even know what would constitute someone being a spammer. If that's the case, they should ask the community for guidance before rolling out a brand new anti-spam bot.

Ironically, in the midst of these issues, a post on the Twitter Blog on Wednesday was about a new Twitter app, TwitterCounter, that lets you track the number of followers you have on Twitter.

All we can say about that is...well...this may have not been the best time to release that news.

Were you affected by the follower limits? Tell us your story in the comments (or just share your thoughts on this issue!)

On July 15th, the Information Overload Research Group (IORG) held their inaugural conference in New York City. The group, whose founders include IBM, Microsoft, Google, Intel, and a dozen other companies and academic institutions, is on a mission to find solutions to today's information overload problems. In attendance at this first conference were both representatives from from the above companies as well as others from all over the world. Now that this event has ended, lets see what we've learned.

Thanks to IORG member and blogger Jared Goralnick, we have a great review of the highlights from the event including historical data, quotes, discussion topics, and even possible software solutions:

Information Overload By the Numbers

• $650 billion: Annual cost of interruptions for knowledge workers in the United States
• 28% of a worker's time is spent dealing with interruptions that are neither urgent nor important
• 6 Hours Per Week: Time lost due to context switching (multi-tasking, pausing, etc) - Does this means the Louis Gray's and Scobles are still few and far between?

Intel also contributed their own internally collected numbers:

• Average employee receives 350 messages per week
• Average executive receives over 300 messages per day
• Employees spend about 20 hours per week managing email, 2 hours of which is unnecessary email

Discussing Solutions

When talking about solutions to the information overload problem, the key areas that were touched on were process, training, and raising awareness. Intel also mentioned a couple of solutions they have implemented themselves - one being the use of "quiet periods" of 4 hours twice per week where people can disconnect from communication and fully focus on getting things done. They also make use of an internal software program called the "Intel Email Effectiveness Coach," that warns people when they're about to do something stupid, like send a message to 2000 people. (Wow - they should sell that!)

As far as software solutions go, Jared provides us a short list of the highlights. Here's what he said stood out:

• RescueTime - keeps track of not just your activities on your computer but those of your office mates, enabling you to see how you stack up and when you're slacking
• Slife - similar to RescueTime in that it gathers statistics about computer usage, but data is primarily kept locally rather than "in the cloud"
• SmartDesktop - Imagine your computer knew what was contextually relevant no matter what you were doing on it. (Private Beta)
• Seriosity - an economics-based approach to email management whereby one attaches virtual currency to their messages
• ActionBase - Turns Outlook into a database of sorts for knowledge management and wiki-like email correspondence
• Talk2Us - Jared called this one a "crazy voice recognition manage-your-life software that's in private beta" (no web site)
• ClearContext - Helps you to better identify important information, group relevant items together, and generally have a better workflow within Outlook
• Permessa -Enterprise unified messaging for performance and compliance monitoring

Jared himself is also the creator of AwayFind, a tool that lets you get away from email without getting out of reach.

We will take a look at some of these other solutions over the coming weeks here at RWW and let you know what we think.

Image Credit: Autoroute: Mzlle Biscotte