Twitter is preparing to launch a new set of tools that will let third party websites easily integrate Twitter features directly into their web sites and services, multiple sources have confirmed. In a nutshell, this is their response to the massively popular Facebook Connect.
Facebook Connect was first announced in May 2008 (Google and MySpace announced similar projects at the same time).
Facebook Connect became generally available later in 2008, and it hasn’t looked back since. Today, Facebook says 80,000 websites have added Facebook Connect, and 60 million Facebook users engage with Facebook connect on these third party websites each month. For many sites, like our own CrunchBase, it’s the only way to create an account and log in.
Facebook Connect is attractive to a lot of smaller sites simply because it’s so easy to implement. They’ve created a number of widgets that bring Facebook features directly to third party sites, and integration is easy. You can find some of these here on TechCrunch.
Last year Twitter released simply buttons to let users on third party sites sign in to Twitter and identify themselves (we use it in our commenting system).
The new Twitter product will allow sites to authenticate users, pull data and then publish back to Twitter, we’ve heard. All of these features exist today via the Twitter API, but the slick Facebook Connect-like packaging and easy-to-use widgets don’t exist yet.
Twitter is also taking an open, standards based approach. They use OAuth, for example, for authentication and data sharing. Facebook uses proprietary protocols for Facebook Connect.
We’ll update as we hear more. But our understanding is that Twitter has been working with a handful of publishers and will likely announce the new product shortly.
Twitter seems to be running behind on this – for a while it seemed like their plan was to be a news feed for peoples’ activities. Facebook has now almost completely stolen that march; can they catch up?
Yeah You are absolutely right!!Fact is twitter is working as a news feeder nothing more then that..But facebook it is far away from this…I dont know They really will be able to catch them up…
Twitter again huh? As they said, Twitter has a saturation point. Some of them are: Interactivity, games, upgrades, more connectivity. As you can see Facebook don’t have this flaws (or at least some of them) and that’s why FB is on a steady growth while Twitter is on a plateau. Twitter Details: http://bit.ly/twitter-1-billion-value-meltdown
And oh, Twitter has not yet been used on a global-scale.. Another reason for the stalling
… A central news feed for their activities across the web, that should read. Their easy-to-implement API initially gave them a head start, but Facebook has been fighting back with new tech as well as picking up Friendfeed and hiring people like David Recordon to win friends in the wider community. Their privacy settings, although obviously deeply flawed, are also more permissive than Twitter’s “either it’s public or it’s friends-locked” attitude.
I think Twitter can catch up and maybe be #1. Facebook seems to have an advantage because people use real names, But Twitter can encourage that too. Some one will win this race and be the integration standard for web sites. One day doing registration on web sites will seem so 90’s.
I think you have a point with the “real names” because we thought about that when adding our new “rsvps” feature to our site. Thinking how fbook actually takes users real names while on twitter users just make up names. Hopefully they start encouraging users to use their real name.
“I think Twitter can catch up and maybe be #1.”
Yea, just as soon as Twitter catches Facebooks 400 million or so users…
I think Twitter and Facebook will coexist. Personally they seem to attack different markets. This is of course assuming they win their respective markets.
I use my real name on Twitter, although, you have to know what it is to find me there.
Maybe Facebook Connect has so many users because a lot of them use it without a purpose. Like your own CrunchBase.
What’s the point in being able to create an account/login to CrunchBase if one can’t *really* make edits to their own info???
I really wanted to update my company’s info, but it’s very discouraging to have to wait for approval.
Hi Felipe – sorry to hear that you find the process discouraging. Most edits to CrunchBase pages do get approved within 24 hours though (as long as they’re legit of course).
Allowing people to make non-anonymous edits is the first step towards allowing a trusted user to “own” a page. If we see that you’ve logged in and added a lot of valuable information to a particular page, becoming a trusted authority on it, we will soon allow you to make unmoderated edits to that page. But you need to take the first step and make the attributed edits.
Thanks for the feedback – you can also @ me or @crunchbase on twitter, which I saw you did last night.
-Andy
There will be no single standard… the market is big enough to be shared. Why should a single company own the ID of the world? Remember there is still GFC.
Mike, I suspect that my tweet today may have triggered your idea for this post. http://twitter.com/aviraj/status/7765504280
I am wrong, of course, but the irony is clear.
Aviraj and everyone else – I don’t agree with or get why sites want to only allow FB Connect as a way of authenticating users. If a spammer wants to leave a comment on a site that requires FB Connect ONLY, he/she will sign-up for a fake FB account and there in. So FB grows from 300M users to 301M users and the toxic comments are still submitted. “Evil doers” will never post as themselves.
Thing is the general public take Twitter users moreseriously than Facebook Connect users and that’s a fact
I won’t use Facebook connect. I’m not happy with Facebooks privacy record, so I’m not about to give them anymore info on me.
I will probably use a similar feature from twitter. I like OAuth. I’d rather sites support OpenID or RPX though.
I agree with you John Smith. FB has a PR problem on their hands now. Need to be careful and start owning our space on the web. Its not FB’s world we’re living in. Its OURS. FB should be thankful we play with them at all. Afterall, FB doesn’t provide any real value to ones life. They are like your favorite football team. Rooting for them makes you feel good, but if they win or loose your life doesn’t change. If feels important at the time, but its really not.
I concur with John Smith. And I would go even further: FB will be the next AOL. Snore
Agreed, I’ve been saying that for a while. The parallels are almost eerie, what with AOL being popular, then started going downhill at the turn of the decade, and “AOL User” slowly became synonymous with “computer illiterate old person.”
Facebook is going to be mailing us discs for 9000 free hours soon enough, and a sound bite of Mark Zuckerberg saying “You’ve Got Updates!” will play whenever your sister sets her relationship status back to “It’s Complicated” for the 7th time today.
oh thank heavens. I thought I was the only one. You don’t know how many times people just tell me to facebook them but don’t know their e-mail address. I have 2 nephews and 2 nieces in the age range of 10-16 and none of them check their e-mail. I’m 60% sure they don’t know their e-mail password. At first I thought it was a good thing cause it would give me a vector to shift them from Hotmail to Gmail but it’s just depressing how they think the entire internet is Facebook, YouTube, and a flash game site “miniflash” or something. I try not to be to harsh on the young ones but really you ever try to explain to a kid why his DSi can’t access YouTube?
Is there a Twitter blog post or something indicating anything about this?
From my point of view I think people would rather use their twitter connect (when it becomes available as rich as facebook connect), because most of the people keep their facebook profile closed and they don’t want to have “unknown friends”. In twitter many people like to have followers as mush as they can, so they will happily place their twitter account in public. Therefore the upcoming “twitter connect or whatever” will attract many users than facebook connect have.
I agree. I’d much rather use my “public” twitter than my “private” Facebook when logging on to sites.
Facebook as got itself a tough competitor, I can already hear Facebook saying “Bring it on”.
http://www.dumblittleblogger.com/
Great news! Finally!
I have a facebook and twitter page and I use twitter mostly because it has simple amounts of information and it integrates well with my tumblr blog. I normally don’t use facebook because honestly I dont like the apps that always want to connect or install something, and the proprietary way of it all. I like the open approach that twitter will take on this, and that makes me feel more comfortable to try it out.
Didn’t this already exist? I’ve been tweeting in response to articles (which appear at the bottom of the page), retweeting articles, and signing into web sites with my Twitter username to change my avatar/background/leave tweets/use as a client for months now.
What more can they do that the API already handles very well (with very streamlined integration with the core service)?
I agree. I don’t understand what Twitter Connect will do outside of what at twitter sign in button already does for users, outside the fact that it’s in an easier package for developers.
I heard Facebook might be looking at OAuth ‘WRAP’ for authentication in the near future.
what features does twitter have that it’s going to offer over this API? the whole point of Facebook Connect is that you can pull interesting info from the API once a user has authorized your app.
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They should have been more forthcoming because they are always going to be playing catchup now!
This is great, competition breeds quality.
wow. very exciting opportunity for us.
FB connect is more compelling from a profile importing standpoint. It has way more substantive information.
That being said, if the nature of the app using Twitters third party sign in service is akin to Twitter itself (aka foursquare) then it may be prefferable. I think that people who want to use Twitter as a web service that merely broadcasts all application activity will be interested in signing in with Twitter.
Nice to see them adding this feature. it’s long overdue.
I am completely agreed that the twitter work as innovative feeder and newly tool and everybody can communicate to each other through twitter.
it will great if twitter gives this functionality and will be especially good for small sites .
David Brown
For a website looking to increase user registration I would recommend the platform solution RPX. RPX allows website users to register and log-in using a variety of existing accounts on Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, Twitter, MySpace, AOL, Windows Live/MSN/Hotmail, or any other OpenID provider. This gives the end user a much larger log-in choice than Facebook Connect or Twitter alone.
yawn…..
isn’t it a bit too late?
Who really cares? There will be a new site in 2010 that will take Twitter down. Just the same as how MySpace has pretty much died. Facebook might be around for longer.
I’m still bitter about the loss of Geocities!
Agreed, nothing is forever on the web. Same goes for Techcrunch and Facebook or even Twitter.
That’s something Facebook will have to learn the hard way. Signs everywhere with historical evidence in their face but they’re still marching on. Wow.
Twitter has already launched it, since december. Check out Twitter partnership with City Search: http://blogs.citysearch.com/national/tweet-local
Marisa