VentureBeat’s integration of Facebook Connect: Working pretty well so far

December 31, 2008 | Eric Eldon | Comments |

We integrated Facebook Connect earlier this week, so now you can sign in and leave a comment on any of our articles using your Facebook username and password. The idea is that Connect will make it easier for you to show off your identity on our site, while letting your friends on Facebook know what you’re up to here.

Once you sign in, you’ll see your Facebook profile picture and your Facebook username appear with any comment you decide to leave. A one-line message about your comment on VentureBeat will also be sent back to Facebook — your friends will see this in their news feeds and in your personal feed on your Facebook profile page. This will hopefully get them to visit us as well. The Connect integration is through Disqus, the blog plugin service we’ve been using since earlier this year.

Connect is in its early stages, but we expect it to become more important for us. The data on Connect adoption is relatively scant as the service only launched publicly less than a month ago. But more than 100,000 people have signed up, according to estimates by the blog AllFacebook. That’s not much considering Facebook’s 140 million monthly active users, but the details are more promising, at least for a site like ours. Video and content sites are leading in Connect usage. For example, the Gawker Media network, including category leaders like media-gossip site Gawker and gadget site Gizmodo, saw a 45 percent uptick in user registrations and a 16 percent increase in number of comments suring the first week after launching Connect.

So far, we’re seeing a nice smattering of readers using Connect. We’ve also seen some commenters complaining about bugs. If you experience a bug, please let us know by emailing me: eric (at) venturebeat (dot) com. At some point, we may integrate Connect’s rival services, Google Friend Connect and MySpaceID. Stay tuned — and happy new year.

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About the Author, Eric Eldon

Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.

  • Awesome, I can use my Facebook icon!
  • Your Facebook icon sucks. I'd go back to your Disqus profile if I were you.
  • Facebook User
    Uh, yeah, this is awesome. Maybe now I'll start commenting on some of the so-called "stories" that you guys write. ;)

    Happy New Year 'beatniks!
  • Guest
    ok
  • so nice!
  • so this is what commenting is like as myself.huh.
  • Facebook User
    Oh bliss. This is going to be a fun year.
  • Well this is pretty cool!
  • Congrats on using the Disqus Facebook Connect Wordpress plugin. I'm using this on my blog myself it's the easiest way to implement FC. There are some stand alone FC Wordpress plugins but using Disqus is great for a lot of other reasons besides their FC implementation.