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@griner‘s session on “Keeping Social Sexy” opened my eyes to the usefulness of Facebook Connect. Prior to that I thought FBC was just a useful way to login to blogs etc. without having to register, was I ever wrong.

From the developer page on FB:

With the Facebook Connect APIs you gain access to:

• Identity: a user’s name, photos, and more.
• Friends: data about a user’s friends.
• Distribution: all of the integration points within Facebook, like stream stories and notifications.
• Integration: profile boxes, profile tabs, and publishers just like apps on Facebook

As you can see FBC has a lot more to offer than a simplified login/registration experience. @griner used the following example: http://www.prototype-experience.com/ This site uses FBC to pull your profile information into a trailer for a video game allowing you the user to become immersed in the content. Some may think this is a little frightening, they may ask “what will my information be used for?”. Therefore, there must be an established level of trust. However, the possibilities of this (not so new) tool abound. Perhaps you want to serve content, ads, images etc. on an individual basis, while maintaining a simple effective way for users to integrate into your site; FBC allows you to do just that. Maybe you want to put an end to anonymous commenting on your blog without forcing users to register, FBC is perfect for that. FBC also allows users to share content from your site seamlessly through their FB profile increasing the chances of site promotion. Another feature allows the user to see how their friends are interacting with your site, creating a more social environment.

Some General Stats From FB:

General Growth

• More than 250 million active users
• More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older

User Engagement

• Average user has 120 friends on the site
• More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
• More than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day
• More than 8 million users become fans of Pages each day

While FBC is not an end all solution, with numbers like these you can see it has great advantages. Personally I’m excited about implementing FBC into future and existing projects.