Usually when I talk about a Facebook virus, I’m addressing some new phishing scam that’s risen up on the social network. This time around, Facebook itself is a virus, in a manner of speaking. TechCrunch reports that the Facebook CTO touts that 2 million sites have installed Facebook plugins on their site.
That’s 2 million Like buttons, Facebook Connect logins, and a host of other tools. The reason this is important is that Facebook becomes a sort of single sign on for the web. This is great for Facebook, because they can build a better profile of its users to sell to advertisers, but it also shows that the privacy outrage is less of an issue than most media outlets would have you believe.
According to the article, Facebook isn’t the only beneficiary of the plugins, sites as diverse as ABC News and NHL.com are reporting doubling or tripling their traffic just based on new visits from Facebook. It’s sure to cause more sites to find ways to get their content on Facebook.
I have to admit that it’s debatable whether this is a case of sites worrying more about revenue than users’ privacy or responding to users’ demands for an easier way to share articles with their friends. That doesn’t mean that the privacy debate is dead, in fact the press has clung to that narrative with Google and Facebook. This just as easily could be a case of the press assuming people are ignorant of the data their sharing, when it’s more likely that they don’t care.
Facebook is getting bigger by moving onto the other sites, they get better user data, and other sites get more traffic. This makes more sense than trying to find new features to cram into the site. Users seem to be responding, but how close are we to signing in everywhere with Facebook? I hope we’re far off. OAuth and other tools are making it more secure to do so, but users need a fair bit of education before this can be rolled out securely.
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