Facebook Connect, Site Redesign Announced by Zuckerberg at F8

The New York Times reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced some major changes for the social networking site, including a site redesign and a new program called Facebook Connect. From the page:

“We are going to see the big social networks start to decentralize into a series of social applications across the Web,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “I think we are at the beginning of a movement and the beginning of an industry.”

To carve out a piece of that future, the company announced Facebook Connect, a way that other Web sites can integrate parts of Facebook’s service. Web sites can ask users for their Facebook user name and password, instead of creating an identity verification system themselves, and offer their users the ability to import their list of friends from Facebook.

For example, the mobile service company Loopt, based in Mountain View, Calif., helps people find their friends and see what they are doing on a map on their mobile phone. It will use Facebook Connect so its users do not have to re-enter their connections to the friends they want to track.

Breaking out of the “walled garden” has been seen as the next paradigm shift for social networks for some time and this seems to be the first step toward carrying one’s identity across the open internet and connecting with others along the way.

Is this the beginning of the Social Web, where your friend list, wall and pack of roving zombies follow you across digital space? Will the popularity of Facebook allow them to set the standard for a potable digital identity in the coming months? Let ReputationDefender know what you think about decentralized social networking and the prospect of a new, digital ID issued through Facebook.