Facebook Expands its Social Platform across the Web Through General Availability of Facebook Connect

Self-Service Lets Third Parties Use Facebook Connect to Tap into Social Graph

PALO ALTO, Calif. – December 4, 2008 – Facebook® today announced the ability for any Website to implement Facebook Connect, a service designed to make it easy for its more than 130 million active users to combine their Facebook experience with any participating Website, desktop application or mobile device. Following several months of testing, Facebook Connect is now available to all interested third parties through a self-service application on Facebook Platform, at: http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php.

“At Facebook, we’re focused on giving people more powerful ways to share and connect. We opened Facebook Platform in 2007 to enable hundreds of thousands of developers to create meaningful social experiences for users on Facebook.com,” said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO, Facebook. “With today’s launch of Facebook Connect, we’re extending that power to millions of entrepreneurs and developers, transforming the Web into a more social place where Facebook’s users can engage in trusted social experiences with their friends.”

Over 100 Websites implemented Facebook Connect during the testing period or are set to release in the coming weeks. Examples include: Citysearch, CNET and TheInsider.com by CBS Interactive, CNN.com/Forum, ConnectedWeddings, Gawker, Global Grind, Govit, Howcast, IndieGoGo, Inside Facebook, Joost, MoveOn, MyBarackObama, Newsbrane, Red Bull, SGN iFun, SFGate, TechCrunch, TripAdvisor, Yammer, Vimeo, vLane, and Xobni; alumni associations at Oklahoma State University, University of Toronto, Oregon State, and Ithaca College; as well as services and plug-ins from Force.com, iModules, Pluck SiteLife, and Six Apart. Early results for several of these sites show that two out of three new registrations are generated through Facebook Connect, and these users have about 50 percent more engagement when compared to non-Facebook Connect users of a Website.

“Facebook Connect is great for our users and business alike--it makes the site more useful and gives us exposure to a whole new audience,” said Jay Herratti, CEO of Citysearch. “Citysearch users will get a much richer experience because they can now discover and share reviews on local businesses with friends they know and trust.”

“Our users come to our sites to consume and engage with content around the topics they care about most – whether that’s celebrity gossip on TheInsider.com or the latest and greatest tech gadgets on CNET,” said Michael Marquez, executive vice president of strategy and corporate development, CBS Interactive. “We create active communities around this content, and Facebook Connect makes it easy for our users to share their opinions, ideas and advice with their entire social network.”

For users of Facebook Connect, notable features of the service include:

• Trusted Authentication – easily login to participating sites using their Facebook account

• Real Identity – leverage their identity across the Web in a trusted environment; no longer have to recreate a new profile on every Website

• Friend Linking – take their friends with them and enable trusted social context anywhere on the Web

• Dynamic Privacy – maintain complete control over privacy as they chose which sites to connect with, as well as which social actions on those sites are shared with friends back on Facebook through their News Feed

• Social Distribution – share actions on participating sites with their friends on Facebook through News Feed

Key benefits for participating Websites include:

• One-click login – users login with their Facebook identity and allow the Website to access their Facebook profile information

• Increased engagement – leverage users’ personal interests to show more relevant information and surface personalized content from friends such as reviews or comments

• New forms of distribution – users share content and actions taken on a third party site with friends back on Facebook, invites and other social communication channels on Facebook

• A proven platform – use the same APIs that have allowed more than 670,000 developers to build more than 52,000 engaging applications for Facebook users

“We’re excited to offer our network of more than 350 publishers, consumer brands and online retailers who utilize the Pluck social media platform, an easy and powerful way to integrate Facebook Connect features into their sites,” said Dave Panos, CEO of Pluck and executive vice president of Demand Media. “Facebook Connect gives hundreds of millions of online users served by our customers the ability to connect and share with their Facebook friends.”