Last year, I was taking a class on social uses of new media. At the end of the first lecture of the semester, our professor turned off the lights, closed his PowerPoint presentation, and proceeded to press play on my first TedTalk: Kevin Kelly on the future of the web.
In the presentation, Kelly speaks about stages of the Internet. We’re going into the third stage, where data is becoming linked into “one machine.” Near the end of the talk, he discusses social networks, and how we currently have to create a new log-in, identify our friends, and build profiles for each site we join. In the next stage of the Internet, our information will be able to follow us across these sites.
At the time, this idea seemed logical, but far-off. Facebook Connect had just launched, but could companies really all work together and share information? Could Facebook really become our main log-in into this “one machine”?
Judging by Facebook’s announcement yesterday, it looks like it might.
The building blocks to this super-social Web are Facebook’s new Open Graph and Social Plugins, which include new “like” buttons everywhere on sites outside Facebook.com, auto-login capabilities for those sites without clicking on Facebook Connect, and even a Facebook social bar which includes several of these plugins plus Facebook chat.
Is this a good thing? What impact will this new social web have on our privacy?
Read More