Facebook to allow anonymous log in

In an effort to give customers more control of how and where they share information, Facebook announced it would allow users to control what data other sites or apps received when they logged in using their Facebook accounts.

The New York Times had this story by Vindu Goel:

Trying to become even bigger — and make more money — Facebook will allow users to reveal a little less.

The social network announced on Wednesday that when its 1.3 billion users log in to other websites or mobile apps through their Facebook identities, they will be able to limit what they reveal to the site or app to just their email addresses and public profile information, like name and gender. Before, depending on the app or site, the simple act of using the Facebook log-in exposed much of their Facebook information to that app or site.

The social network also announced that it was testing a feature to allow people to use their Facebook identity to log in to other sites or apps through a button marked “Log in anonymously.”

Forbes’ Kashmir Hill had a story about why people should actually care about this new development:

Assuming “Anonymous Login” becomes universally available, I assume it will be widely used. The sign up process for new services is laborious. Everyone hates filling out forms for a new account, and confirming a password via email. It’s far easier to “log in using Facebook” (or Twitter or Google) but most people hate the information hand-over that entails, giving some new service access to your Facebook deets or the right to post tweets on your Twitter account.

Erasing that risk will make people even more comfortable using Facebook as their universal sign-in across the Web and app ecosystem. Which is great for Facebook as a utility; even if people aren’t visiting Facebook as often, they’re using it constantly to interact with other services. Though it’s allowing users to sign into third party services anonymously — by provided those services with a unique code that can’t be tied back to the person’s Facebook account — their use of those services won’t be anonymous to Facebook. Facebook the data broker will still know every service their users are signed up for, making them even more valuable to advertisers who want to target particular groups. By giving users the power of anonymity for services outside of Facebook, the company makes itself more valuable as the broker who grants access to those users, about which it knows so much.

In other words, anonymous login is not really anonymous. Facebook still knows who you are, and can tie you to your behavior on those third party sites, say if law enforcement comes calling.

Or that just means that Facebook will have even more leverage over advertisers and others who collect user data. It’s also an added step for app developers, writes Karissa Bell for Mashable:

While this is good news for users, Facebook’s changes to login will mean many changes on the developer side. It may be easy for users to simply decline individual app permissions, but the unbundling comes with several extra steps for developers on the backend.

Facebook will be implementing the login changes by adding an extra step to the app-review process that all developers go through: login review.

Login review will evaluate apps on three main points: whether the permissions an app is requesting are actually necessary, that apps must clearly ask for permission to post on a user’s behalf, and how well the login process itself works by checking for crashes or errors.

Facebook knows that implementing these changes will be a lengthy process, so developers will have a year to make their existing apps compliant with the new login standards. However, the new login-review step will be effective immediately for any new apps.

Writing for Bloomberg, Mark Milian analyzed CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s speech to developers and what that means for the future of their business. Excerpts from his story are below:

At Facebook’s f8 developers conference in San Francisco yesterday, Zuckerberg hammered the audience of app makers from around the world with a handful of keywords. Besides the obvious ones that kept showing up on PowerPoint slides behind him, like “build, grow and monetize,” there were a few messages that listeners may not have picked up on. Each of these words — heard over and over again during the CEO’s 18 minutes or so on stage — speak volumes about Facebook’s business.

Trust: Zuckerberg used this word five times over the course of five minutes. “Trust” was mainly used in the context of some new tools that allow app users to share less personal information with developers when connecting their accounts to Facebook.

Stable: This word came out of Zuckerberg’s mouth 15 times in his relatively brief appearance on stage. (Three of those were “stability.”) App developers frequently grumble about the reliability of the tools Facebook provides them for connecting to the social network. A survey of developers in 2011 found that Facebook’s system was the source of the most headaches, nearly double that of Google.

Mobile: This was the winner of the day. Zuckerberg said it 18 times. Practically every new product announced yesterday was geared toward smartphones: a Like button for apps, a mobile ad network, usage-tracking software, the login features. Zuckerberg also made the point that Facebook has conquered the challenge of monetizing mobile usage.

It looks like Facebook is going to try to make at least everyone have some presence or relationship with its site. Of course, if you can use one log in and profile and control how your data is shared, you’re likely to keep your Facebook account open even if you’ve grown disillusioned with it.  Facebook is essentially going to keep its subscriber numbers up by making it easy for you to use other sites. This is smart on Facebook’s part.