I just commented on this article on this site. Since this article is really relevant to my blog I wouldn’t not want you to miss it. I’ll just post my comment here as well, but be sure to read the article and other comments if they come. So here’s my comment:

 

Indeed Facebook Connect is strongly resembling the MS Passport initiative. The difference is that MS Passport was expensive and restrictive to implement, Facebook Connect isn’t. Therefor FC has a much greater chance of actually making it.

In that sense, the big corporations like MS, Google, Yahoo and such are just too late in providing a real open initiative. If they would have started accepting OpenID they would have given much momentum that would greatly reduce the chances of Facebook.

OpenID

Another problem is that web2.0 integration – albeit without portability and without real point-to-multipoint integration – is getting off the ground and facebook is one of those that actually embrace it. The alternatives seem to have come a little late.

Apart from all this the question remains whether FC really allows true dataportability. I tend to severely doubt that. I can certainly take my facebook data with me on those other sites, but that just makes the other site into a ‘Facebook App’ rather than making true interoperable and portable dataflows between those sites possible…

It will be interesting to see what comes out of all this in the coming time. Even though MS Passport had some initial partners, the success never came. For FC we will have to see what the future brings…

MSPassport

Willem Kossen