14 DAY TRIAL // Forget the search wars, forget real-time, forget Twitter, there is only one real battle for the web right now and it’s between Facebook and Google. What's more interesting is that Facebook seems to be winning. This battle, to be the web's identity provider, pits Facebook Connect against Google Friend Connect and, while Google can still boast the wider adoption, it's the former that wining the major customers. Now, one year after being launched, Facebook is revealing some impressive stats attesting to the program's success.
“Over the past year, Facebook Connect has brought an end to lengthy registration processes on many websites, provided a new way to interact with your News Feed on sites like Yahoo!, MSN and iGoogle, and empowered you to take your Facebook identity and friends to technologies such as Nintendo DSi, Xbox and iPhone apps,” Ethan Beard director of the Facebook Developer Network writes.
“From social widgets like the Comments Box, Share button and Live Stream Box to deeper integrations including log in, Facebook Connect is helping developers drive more traffic to their site, ease the registration process, and provide a more engaging experience for users,” he added over at Facebook's Developers site.
So, what has Facebook Connect accomplished in a year? The social network claims that more than 80,000 websites have now integrated Connect in one form or another up from 15,000 just a few months ago. The number may be even greater if you factor in other services like widget providers, which have some Facebook functionality and are also spread across a large number of sites. However, Google boats over eight million sites have implemented Friend Connect so, on the face of it, it would seem that the search giant is well ahead.
Google's nine million are largely made up of Blogger, owned by Google blogs, while Facebook has managed to attract the biggest players, recently announcing a wider partnership with Yahoo for example. In fact, Facebook claims that two-thirds of comScore's Top 100 websites in the US have implemented Connect and that half of the Global Top 100 websites have done so as well. Facebook says that more than 60 million people use Connect every month now, it has some 350 million users in total, and the number is still growing.