Twitter Punches Back at Facebook Connect
Twitter is launching tools to let third party Web sites more easily integrate Twitter features directly into their sites and services, in what some are calling “their response to the massively popular Facebook (News – Alert) Connect.”
That’s the opinion of industry observer Michael Arrington, who writes that “Facebook says 80,000 websites have added Facebook Connect, and 60 million Facebook users engage with Facebook connect on these third party sites each month.”
Baltimore Sun blogger Gus Sentementes notes that he “would be much more inclined to connect to a site via a ‘Twitter connect’ feature than Facebook Connect. I have far less personal information associated with my Twitter account than with my Facebook account… A lot of people want a way to connect with others without sharing private information with third parties.”
Facebook Connect was announced in May 2008, and Google (News – Alert) and MySpace quickly rushed out similar products.
Arrington says Facebook Connect is attractive to a lot of smaller sites “simply because it’s so easy to implement. They’ve created a number of widgets that bring Facebook features directly to third party sites, and integration is easy.”
Twitter is using an open, standards based approach with OAuth for authentication and data sharing, while Facebook uses proprietary protocols for Facebook Connect.
We can’t say we didn’t see this coming: Last April Ben Parr reported that Twitter “has quietly given some developers access to a new feature, Sign in with Twitter, which uses Twitter’s new OAuth technology to allow people to log into and access third party Web sites using their Twitter accounts. Sound familiar? On the surface, this has striking similarities to Facebook Connect.”
Industry observer Kit Eaton (News – Alert) writes that Facebook Connect is a juggernaut Twitter would do well to be wary of — “… it’s been so very successful it’s basically stamped out competing services from Google. And now there’s news that it’s hitting MySpace (News – Alert) — which is an even more potent demonstration of Connect’s power, since MySpace was a vicious Facebook rival in the early days, and it actually had its own competing service just two years ago.”
Eaton describes Twitter, “Facebook’s newest rival on the social network scene,” as determined to “get into the same sort of cross-Web site login business that Connect operates in.”
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