Twitter aligns with Google Friend Connect

It looks like Google has won the first salvo in the social ID battle. Google announced that its Friend Connect service is now compatible with Twitter, meaning that users can now use their Twitter logon information to log into other Friend-Connect compatible sites and share social networking information. And so far, no word from Twitter on when it will become compatible with Facebook's competing service, Facebook Connect. Chalk one up for open social networking standards.

Because of the integration, Twitter users can now visit sites outside Twitter, log in using their Twitter credentials, and have access to their Twitter profile. This means they can quickly discover people on the new site who are also Twitter members, as well as tweet about the site automatically.

According to a CNET post by Caroline McCarthy, Twitter has yet to integrate with Facebook's competing Facebook Connect service, although:

There's still no reason to assume Twitter won't integrate Facebook Connect, but for now, it's just Google's alternative.

One reason for Twitter's initial pro-Googleness is that Twitter was a launch partner for MySpace's MySpaceID, which has yet to debut but is said to be powered by Google Friend Connect. Another could be Google's view of the Friend Connect service, which is to bring social networking tools to the entire Web, pushing sites like Twitter more readily into the mainstream. Google Friend Connect, for example, is based on the OpenID, OAuth and OpenSocial standards, whereas Facebook Connect is built on Facebook's own proprietary stack. Once Twitter integrates with Facebook Connect, its users will only be bolstering the Facebook site, but with Friend Connect, Twitter gets entree to much more of the Web. And that's probably more appealing, at least initially.

• Software
• Facebook
• Facebook Connect
• Friend Connect
• Google
• open
• proprietary
• social ID
• social networking
• Twitter