San Francisco — For those anxiously awaiting to crawl into the world of social news, then they can rejoice as Digg, one of the most popular social bookmarking web services over the Internet has finally opened up its service to Facebook’s more than 200 million users, through Facebook Connect, empowering anyone having a Facebook account to vote on Digg news stories and share them with friends on the ubiquitous social network.
Digg CEO Jay Adelson has suggested that Facebook Connect is the future of Digg, and that Facebook’s massive user-base will both spur Digg usage and provide a collaborative filter on stories.
With Facebook Connect users would also be empowered to push their activity through cross-post, as well as share Digg activities back to Facebook social network so that their contacts can see what they have been digging on Digg.
This integration would allow Facebook users to log into the website without creating a brand new account.
And undoubtedly, with the Internet’s widely populated social news site supporting Connect, Facebook gets a boost in its race with Google and Twitter to be the universal log-in service of choice.
Digg is another major sites to implement Facebook Connect thus far. Second after that is likely CNN and CitySearch, both of which implemented Connect late last year.
And unlike Facebook Connect, “Sign in with Twitter” is built on OAuth, a transparent, open-source standard. That instantly wins it some points with a niche of developers.
The move is definitely perceived as a win-win for both parties. Users of both sites have long been able to post stories they have dugg to their Facebook profiles through various third party Facebook apps. The real wonder here is that Digg will have an alternate way for newcomers to use the site in a way where long-term usage can be tracked and promoted back over to Facebook users who have not yet registered with Digg (and no longer need to).
Additionally, Google Friend Connect appears to be delivering some pretty bold promises to webmasters and bloggers, such as saying that using the service will “attract more visitors” to their sites. Its friend-building features and the ability to interact with other social networks makes it a sort of decentralized social network. Friend Connect can be easily implemented on Blogger since both services are run by Google.
Nevertheless, Google, Facebook and Twitter all have good reason to want to be on every website and blog: It makes their products more sticky. And if one log-in system overwhelmingly wins over the Internet’s heart, it could become the standard. Right now, there is no really ubiquitous social platform.
Watch a Facebook Connect Demo Video Here:
Digg: Facebook Connect Demo from Digg Meetups on Vimeo.