14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook has made a bunch of announcements during its F8 developer conference keynote, including a brand new option to log in anonymously.
While Facebook has been going on and on about how important it is to use your true identity on the social network, now it wants to change things a bit.
Anonymous Login won’t actually allow you to hide your identity from Facebook per se, but it will help you out in testing the apps you want without sharing any of your Facebook info.
The move addresses the big concerns in the market regarding user privacy as many apps require a lot of information from Facebook, going beyond the public data on the profile. Under these circumstances, people choose not to try out new apps, picking privacy over a new app they’re not even sure they’re going to like.
The new button will be black instead of the iconic Facebook shade of blue and it will be placed right underneath the “Log in with Facebook” option. Clicking on it will enable users to log into apps without providing a username or password and without having to worry about handing over personal Facebook data to untrusted developers.
If you decide you want to eventually share such info and to benefit from getting help from your buddies in various games, for instance, you can always choose the Facebook log in.
The company is already testing out the new log-in option with select developers, including Flipboard, which means that in a few months, at least a few apps will have this feature, only to be rolled out on a wider level in the future.
At the same time, the company is also working to provide users with more control over the things they share with other services.
That being said, Facebook will be rolling out new kinds of permissions for apps, which will enable users to select exactly what Facebook info they want to share with third-party apps.
The public profile will be required, but the rest of the details are up for everyone to decide. Up until now, apps would just request a list of items they wanted you to share and you had to either say “yes” to everything or just don’t install it.
Developers will be required to switch to this new permissions page in the coming year, revealed Eddie O’Neil, Facebook’s product manager.
With these two new additions, Facebook is giving control to its 1 billion users, something that’s bound to earn the social network some bonus points.