Facebook Reaching Out To Other Social Sites

Last year, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg opened up the ecosystem of the social networking site to third party developers looking to create applications for the site. This week at its annual F8 developer conference, Zuckerberg laid out details for the direction of the site, stressing more social networking across the Web and benefits for third party application developers who qualify for "Great Apps."

Speaking at F8, Zuckerberg said Facebook is looking to "decentralize," meaning that Facebook wants to be part of the overall conversation instead of a site where people land to meet friends and trade messages.

"Things are going to decentralize quite a bit," said Zuckerberg. "Less is going to be about the site Facebook.com and more is going to be about other apps and the experience we are building together."

In the fall, Facebook Connect will be rolled out. It's an initiative that lets users log on to other popular social networking sites with their Facebook login. Once Facebook Connect launches, sites like Digg will become part of the Facebook ecosystem, with the 90 million users able to get onto the site and share information without having to use a second login.

According to a release from the company, 24 Websites and applications have joined Facebook's efforts to make the Web more connected. The first round of players in the sandbox are working toward four common goals set down by Facebook Connect.

Trusted Authentication allows easy authentication on partner sites. Real Identity lets users be themselves on the Web in a trusted environment. Friend Linking enables trusted context anywhere on the Internet. Dynamic Privacy assures the same level of security and privacy settings will follow users around the Net. And finally, Social Distribution aims to share social interaction across partner sites such as Evite, Flock and Hulu.

Earlier this week MySpace announced its intentions to join the OpenID alliance. OpenID is an open source service that allows users to eliminate the need for multiple logins for different sites.

Zuckerberg also addressed third party applications that bombard users with requests and take away from the overall experience of the site. "Great Apps" rewards developers who create applications that "advance the vision of the site." To be classified as a Great App, developers must create applications that create "meaningful, trustworthy and well-designed user experiences." Applications and developers who meet the criteria will benefit from great visibility on Facebook and earlier access to tools the social networking site will offer to third parties.

The first two applications to garner the distinction are iLike and Causes.