Facebook Connect

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What Does Facebook Connect Mean?

Facebook Connect is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) launched by Facebook in 2008 that enabled users to log on to third-party websites, applications or devices using their Facebook identity.

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Facebook Connect is a way for Web or application developers to help their users to connect and share content with their friends, both on and off Facebook. This can increase a site or application’s interaction with its users.

Techopedia Explains Facebook Connect

The most common example of Facebook Connect is its use in commenting on Web content. Articles posted online often allow comments. When they do so through Facebook Connect, the Facebook user’s comment is also posted to his or her news feed (and therefore sent to all the user’s friends). The comment also shows the user’s name and profile picture on the website where the article appears. This function has been adopted by many online publishers because when posters are forced to act under a verifiable identity, this can help reduce hateful, violent or spam comments.

Facebook Connect provides the following functionalities:

  • Authentication: Users can connect their Facebook accounts with Facebook partner sites and applications while using the trusted user authentication Facebook provides.
  • Identity Verification: The use of a Facebook profile provides a way to authenticate a user’s identity for other applications.
  • Interactivity: Facebook Connect gives Facebook users more opportunity to interact with their Facebook friends outside of Facebook itself.
  • Privacy: Facebook Connect maintains all the privacy settings a user implements on Facebook itself.
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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.