Search Engine Optimization News Blog

Facebook is trying to reduce the website registration hassles by introducing ‘Connect’ feature. This will improve loyalty to Facebook among its users. The connect feature will try to streamline the need for multiple logins for websites that require registration. Your friends in Facebook can now track your online history to a certain extent once you enable the Connect feature. The service is not yet launched and it is still on the anvil and will be launched in few weeks.

All the sites that partner with Facebook can now make use of the same login. You will not have to create multiple logins and keep track of them as long as the website that requires registration is part of the Connect network. Using the connect feature you can also update the newsfeed and the list of websites that you visited within the network will be updated. Your newsfeed in Facebook will indicate if you happen to digg an article in Digg. All your friends in your Facebook network will be able to follow your newsfeed.

This is Facebook’s second attempt after its failure last time with Facebook’s Beacon, which was an advertising program that burnt their fingers, as they did not make the users aware that the partner websites will share the information on online activity with Facebook. As the saying goes, once bitten twice shy; now Facebook users will be able to adjust the settings and control the amount of transparency that they would like to have with regard to their online movement. Moreover, Facebook is extra cautious in gathering partners for the Connect network and authorizing them in to the program. MySpace already has similar feature and so does Google in the form of Friend Connect. Now Facebook is trying to compete with its big time competitors, Google and MySpace.

One of the advantages of this feature is that you don’t have to spend your precious time online in signing up with various sites. Facebook will serve as a single control panel that will allow you to create and edit your account information. Moreover, you don’t have to be too worried about the nature of the websites that you are registering as Facebook would have done the homework for you and only will include trustworthy sites. Facebook will be liable for any issues with regard to partner site scams. So they will make sure that they have only reliable sites in their network that users can trust.

Now for the SEO and SEM professionals, this gives a good reason to promote themselves in Facebook as this new Connect feature is likely to attract a number of new users and also there is going to be exchange of visitor traffic meaning better exposure. Those who engage in social bookmarking should start concentrating on Facebook too now as much as they spent time with YouTube and MySpace. A number of big names have already announced their participation in the Connect feature and some of them include – Twitter, Disney-ABC Television Group, StumbleUpon, Plaxo, etc.