San Francisco – Facebook now has more than 400 million users
worldwide — up from 350 million in December — and 100 million of them are
using Facebook Connect to link their accounts and data to third-party websites,
CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared at the company’s f8 conference in San Francisco. The
company also announced a new set of social plug-ins that will enable
third-party websites to install a snippet of code, and then users will be able
to "like" specific pieces of content of that site and have that
action appear on their Facebook profiles, according to PaidContent’s coverage
of the event.
An example given was integration with Web radio service Pandora,
where a first-time user of the service would be fed songs from bands they had
previously denoted they "liked" on other websites.
The company noted
that no user data is shared with the third-party websites.
The new expanded "like"
feature for Facebook Connect is being plugged to users via a banner when they
log in.
Near the bottom of the page explaining the feature, Facebook provides a
link to opt-out of the feature; "No Thanks" opt-out buttons will also
be placed on partner sites.
"If you opt-out, your public Facebook
information can still be shared by your friends to these partner sites unless
you block the application," reads the disclaimer.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/vog7q
(PaidContent)
http://social.venturebeat.com/2010/04/21/facebook-stats-400m
