It’s getting a little scary. I’m at the point where I would rather spend 5 minutes filling out a new profile than log into a third party site using Facebook Connect. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook Connect is a great tool (for Facebook) and I appreciate the gesture of interoperability, but I can’t help but see it as the single greatest threat to the future of the social web.
I don't see the issue here. Anyone who beats Facebook is going to have to offer nearly all of Facebook's features and some killer-app features of its own. So any Facebook-killer will make it similarly easy to integrate a FBKiller-Connect feature.<p>And the ramp up of any Facebook-Killer is going to be months or years. In that intervening few years, people will be dual-networked: they'll be using the new network with their friends who have the new network, and they'll be using Facebook for the friends that haven't switched or for legacy features (Farmville), sort of like now, where many people have both a Facebook and a MySpace.<p>And given the existing fundamental lock-in of the network effects, I don't think Facebook Connect is the largest hurdle someone plotting a Facebook-Killer has to overcome.
Some battles have a winner, publishers are no more likely to stop adopting FB connect then they are to start inserting robots no-follow.<p>Google won the (general) search battle and it's nigh impossible for a young innovative start-up to beat them. Facebook are beginning to assume Google-esque dominance, and no start-up looks at all likely to displace them.<p>In the end ease of use wins every time.
Reminds me of Chris Messina's talk “Identity is the Platform”.<p><a href="http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/10/01/video-of-my-talk-identity-is-the-platform/" rel="nofollow">http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/10/01/video-of-my-talk-ident...</a>