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I integrated Facebook Connect to this blog using a plugin Javier Reyes wrote and a lot of tweaking. It was actually the main mission whilst creating this new blog. What  it primarily does is “enabling you to integrate the power of Facebook Platform into your own site” as they state on their site. Using a limited set of code, it allows you to integrate a Facebook Connect button. When a user clicks the button he can link his Facebook account (and all the data he has entered there) to your website. But there is more too it than that:

• Seamlessly “connect” the Facebook account and information with your site
• Connect and find friends who also use your site or invite those we don’t know about it  yet
• Share actions on your site with Facebook friends by posting newsfeed stories

Off course, all of this with the privacy settings you use on Facebook. Meaning that you have to set permissions for being contacted by the site owner or that you have to permit me to post the fact you commented on this site manually.

Yet, this offers many possibilities for smaller and larger site owners. Facebook has over 1,6 million users in Belgium and over 140 million worldwide, making it the largest and best spread social network on earth (note: for the moment, Netlog remains the n° 1 network in Belgium with 2,5 million accounts approximately).

Connecting to a site (and by doing so, giving away your gender, name, location, hobbies, interests and so on) is easier than ever before. One click (or actually two, since you have to hit that ‘allow’ button once as well) makes this a breeze. And requiring extended access (an optin for instance to send regular updates) is even easier. A small text appears in the side column once you connected to this site and remains there until you granted access to receive updates. And that is – once more – not more difficult than clicking one single button.

Another big advantage is the viral aspects Facebook Connect opens by tapping into the Facebook site. Inviting your Facebook friends to a site is easier than
typing in email addresses you can hardly remember, right? The invite box you will see is the same one you use when inviting friends to other applications within the Facebook website.

And – it’s not over yet -  every time you post a comment on this blog, I kindly ask you if you want to share this info on your newsfeed. Because every time you do so, all of your friends will be notified that you wrote something on my blog.

Clicking the button above, results in a newsfeed entry like the one below.

I even managed to get the community aspects working, meaning that I can show you – once connected – who of your Facebook friends are also connected to this site. You have an immediate overview of what they commented on, enabling you to see what they are interested in. You can even click and see their profile or contact them (or any other member) directly using Facebook Inbox.

At Proximity BBDO we are currently using Facebook Connect in several projects. More about that as soon as they see the light…