Facebook Launches OpenID Support – Users Can Now Login With Gmail Accounts
Last month, Facebook announced that users would soon be able to login to the site via OpenID. Today, Facebook has officially become an OpenID relying party: users can now register for Facebook using their Gmail accounts and any OpenID provider that supports automatic login. As such, Facebook has become the largest OpenID relying party on the web.
Now, once users link their Facebook account to a Gmail address (or OpenID URL), they’ll be automatically logged in when they go to Facebook after having logged into that service. Facebook says that in its user testing so far, users who register through OpenID actually get engaged with Facebook more quickly than others.
“In tests we’ve run, we’ve noticed that first-time users who register on the site with OpenID are more likely to become active Facebook users. They get up and running after registering even faster than before, find their friends easily, and quickly engage on the site. We’ll continue to integrate more OpenID providers into our registration and account linking flows as they support automatic login,” Facebook says.
To link an existing account with a Google or OpenID account, users can go to their Account Settings page and choose an account in the Linked Accounts section. Yahoo and MySpace are also listed here, but a Facebook prompt says “Note that your accounts from Myspace and Yahoo do not allow for automatic login.”
We recently spoke with Facebook engineer Luke Shepard, who represents Facebook on the OpenID Foundation board, to get his perspective on Facebook’s OpenID integration.
Inside Facebook: Luke, why is Facebook integrating OpenID support?
Luke Shepard: The primary motivation for us is to accept OpenID for new users registering for Facebook. For now, that means through Gmail, though more providers will be coming soon. Google released their address book API a few months ago through OpenID, and we’re using that. The response has been pretty positive so far in our user testing.
In addition, for existing users, we’re offering a feature for you to login automatically if you have an account with an OpenID provider. For example, I have a Gmail account. Every day, I open up my browser and go to Gmail and Facebook, and now you can be automatically logged into Facebook after logging into Gmail.
Which other companies have support coming soon?
Yahoo has been an OpenID provider for over a year and is on the verge of supporting automatic login. Microsoft hasn’t launched as a provider yet, but will sometime. The big three will be covered pretty soon.
What steps did Facebook take to overcome some of the user experience challenges that have hindered OpenID?
One thing we did was we skipped some of the hard part. Probably the most difficult open question in the OpenID community is how do you get a user to register with an OpenID for the first time. We’re skipping that for existing users right now to make sure we get the underlying system working. We’re working on a lot of ideas for how we can present that to the user after we launch – like how to do OpenID login in a popup and keeping users on the page versus sending them off to another site.
We’re a major identity provider with the Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect. We’ve been trying to do a good job on this for apps, and this is a good chance for us to eat our own dogfood with identity and learn what we can do better for apps in the future.
There are very few sites that support the background automatic login in OpenID, but this is a core part of the Facebook Connect experience. Others haven’t done this yet because it’s pretty difficult technically. When designing our OpenID implementation, I was drawing on several Facebook engineers here to learn from how we did various things with Connect. It’s also still rapidly evolving.
Other relying parties will get the cookies, but they’ll usually redirect you to the provider and then you’ll be directed back, but there are a lot of risks with that approach because when you’re a site like us where we’re bigger than almost all the providers were going to be using, it’s important for us not to send them off to a site and have a bad experience.
What other designs have you seen that have worked well?
Currently the best approach out there is what Chris Messina has caleld the “NASCAR” approach (putting a bunch of buttons up for the user to choose). Currently we’re trying to avoid that approach with a couple sidesteps:
- For new users who we know have a Gmail account, we can show them one big Gmail button, and we’d like to expand that to other providers.
- We’re also letting existing accounts link.
Can users login to sites with Facebook Connect through Gmail and OpenID as well, or just Facebook.com?
Only facebook.com. Right now, we’re trying to get something out to users and figure out what is the smallest set of functionality that we can roll out, because it involves laying a lot of the groundwork from a security perspective. Now that we’ve laid the groundwork there’s a bunch of iterations we can do.
Why have you been such a big internal advocate of OpenID at Facebook?
The company is really big into open standards and open source already from the highest level – Mike Schroepfer came from Mozilla. Basically everything here is open source, like Thrift. It’s not like I’m fighting a battle, I’ve just found that my role is to learn what’s going on in the community and educate what’s going on inside the company.
In the long run, i think we’ll see that open standards are ultimately what win. Part of what we’re trying to figure out is how do we get there and how does our product work with open standards. Using the popup and doing the background approach aren’t things that the OpenID commuinity hasn’t really pushed yet, but they’re core to the Facebook Connect product. We want to try to help incorporate these back into the OpenID community.
Is the OpenID movement good for Facebook?
I think it’s good for Facebook in two ways. First, registration rates: OpenID clearly makes registration easier for users, which is good for growth. Our growth team tries everything, so I think this will increase our growth rate.
Second, if we participate in open standards and help define them and work to have our innovations contributed, it’s ultimately going to lead to a better product than trying to fight them.
What’s your relationship with Google been like working on this?
We’ve been talking with them to make sure it works well, but we were able to get it working with the public API documentation.
Thanks Luke – any final thoughts?
This is still an early version, and not yet a finished product. There should be more iterations soon.
May 18th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
[...] broke the news and has an in depth interview with Facebook engineer and OpenID Foundation board member Luke Shepard, I highly recommend you [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
[...] Facebook registrieren. Ebenfalls möglich ist das Erstellen eines Kontos mit Gmail-Zugangsdaten. Wie Inside Facebook erfahren hat, soll gleiches in Kürze auch für Yahoo- und Microsoft-Logins gelten. Wie für Facebook [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
[...] link your Facebook account to an OpenID provider. Not all will let you login automatically, and the Inside Facebook interview with Luke Shepard is focusing on Google accounts. And sure, like so many others, I log onto Gmail every morning, and [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
[...] OpenId no daña tu estrategia ni aunque quieras ser el más cerrado de la red. Más información en Inside Facebook y el blog [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
[...] Connect è un ottimo modo per integrare un sistema di single sign on sul proprio sito (FB ha lanciato il supporto per openid!) e naturalmente per scatenare meccanismi virali che permettono di [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Would love to see if i can sign up my Google and at a later date add my (most common*) OpenID indentifer (Hopefully – LiveID provided) see http://dev.live.com/blogs/devlive/archive/2008/10/27/421.aspx :) (whenever they actually launch it mainstream)
* i have Google, Yahoo and AOL/ Screenname accounts *laughs* (unless OpenID allows in time multi account linking)
May 18th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Thought i try out some of the linking settings
For existing members it available via ‘Settings’ > ‘Account Settings’ and is apart of the ‘Linked Account’ section
Amongst Google & ‘OpenID’ It also link account options for
- Google (if google is sign on – Facebook signed on :))
- Myspace (currently not automatic log on)
- Yahoo – result as myspace
- Vidoop (sp?) not tried as no account but result is presumed to be same as Myspace & Yahoo
- MyOpenID [supposely a well known OpenID provider] it may or may not autologin – untested
- OpenID (the generic type) autologin? – not tested!
What i can see being added afterwards (not in any order):
- LiveID
- ‘MyScreenName’/AOL/ ‘AOL Bebo’
- Twitter OAuth ‘Sign in as Twitter’ (I do think People will think Facebook brought them out if they did add it but its appearing on blogs etc via Disqus and other mediums)
- NingID (ning.com)
- Other ‘popular’ OpenID providers e.g. Verisign PIP
May 18th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
[...] a huge wall to cross to get between social parties. No more. Mr. Facebook bring down that wall! Facebook Launches OpenID Support – Users Can Now Login With Gmail Accounts “…once users link their Facebook account to a Gmail address (or OpenID URL), [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
[...] is fine for what it is, as a social connector of sorts. But expecting most people to give a rat’s behind about OpenID is about as likely as people reliving their old Microsoft .NET passport accounts. Even worse is the [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 12:03 am
[...] ha iniziato a supportare il protocollo OpenID, che permette agli utenti di autenticarsi sul sito sfruttando le credenziali [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 12:44 am
[...] link your Facebook account to an OpenID provider. Not all will let you login automatically, and the Inside Facebook interview with Luke Shepard is focusing on Google accounts. And sure, like so many others, I log onto Gmail every morning, and [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 1:16 am
[...] Connect è un ottimo modo per integrare un sistema di single sign on sul proprio sito (FB ha lanciato il supporto per openid!) e naturalmente per scatenare meccanismi virali che permettono di attirare [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 1:31 am
[...] a Facebook and Gmail user (who doesn’t anyway?), you’d be glad to know that Facebook now supports myOpenID. This means that you can now use your Gmail credentials to login to Facebook. To put in in a [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 2:30 am
[...] | InsideFacebook Condividi questo [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 3:20 am
[...] Vía | Inside Facebook. [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 3:30 am
It’s good that facebook launches open ID support. But it is only for gmail accounts.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:35 am
[...] Facebook viene anche un’altra novità importante: il cosiddetto Open Id support. Come dice uno dei blog semiufficiali della società, è la possibilità di accedere al social network attraverso il proprio “account” di [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 4:16 am
[...] Inside Facebook // SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Facebook lanza soporte para OpenID”, url: “http://www.theinquirer.es/2009/05/19/facebook-lanza-soporte-para-openid.html” }); [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 6:13 am
[...] e Yahoo!, ma questi ultimi attualmente non permettono però il login automatico. Articolo via InsideFacebook [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 6:22 am
All this linking stuff is fine, but the real benefit of OpenID will only be realised when people without Facebook accounts can actually sign up using their OpenIDs. As of now, someone without a Facebook account still needs to sign up for a new Facebook account.
May 19th, 2009 at 7:00 am
[...] registrieren können. Ebenfalls möglich ist das Erstellen eines Kontos mit Gmail-Zugangsdaten. Wie Inside Facebook erfahren hat, soll gleiches in Kürze auch für Yahoo- und Microsoft-Logins [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 7:21 am
[...] once users link their Facebook account to a Gmail address (or OpenID URL), they’ll be automatically logged in when they go to Facebook [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 8:05 am
[...] There is a great write up on the announcement over at InsideFacebook – check it out. [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 11:04 am
[...] on in a few areas and like before Doc and Kaliya are at the heart of them. For example, Facebook yesterday had the big announcement on OpenID (hey that’s identity) and all this social media rage is really all about VRM (Vendor [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
[...] de los grandes ofreciera la posibilidad de usar OpenID como sistema de identificaci
May 19th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
[...] Facebook – Facebook Launches OpenID Support – Users Can Now Login With Gmail Accounts (Suggested by Kevin Dente) [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
[...] Para lograr ingresar por medio de Open ID, los usuarios tendrán que configurar la cuenta de Facebook y seleccionar una cuenta en la parte de cuentas enlazadas, como se informó en la página Inside Facebook. [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
[...] Facebook has agreed to support OpenID, May 2009 Era of Social Context (starts in 2010, matures in 2012) This era is certainly not in maturity, but we can see some early examples of demographic scraping. [...]
May 20th, 2009 at 7:33 am
[...] Vía | Inside Facebook. [...]
May 22nd, 2009 at 5:21 am
[...] Facebook has agreed to support OpenID, May 2009 Era of Social Context (starts in 2010, matures in 2012) This era is certainly not in maturity, but we can see some early examples of demographic scraping. [...]
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:03 am
[...] Facebook Connect Includes Google through OpenID from Inside Facebook: Great news and a definite sign of the times. [...]
May 25th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
[...] users who register on the site with OpenID are more likely to become active Facebook users,” Facebook says. “They get up and running after registering even faster than before, find their friends [...]
May 26th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
well it doesn’t fucking work through gmail
May 28th, 2009 at 1:19 am
[...] week Facebook announced it has become an OpenID relying party: any user with OpenID URI can seamlessly login and register to Facebook. After users link their [...]
May 30th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
[...] OpenID be a honey trap in the hands of the wrong providers? Last week Facebook announced it has become an OpenID relying party: any user with OpenID URI can seamlessly login and register to Facebook. After users link their [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 3:39 am
[...] http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/05/18/facebook-launches-openid-support-users-can-now-login-with-a…αναφέρει πως η σύνδεση στο Gmail θα σημαίνει απο εδώ και πέρα την αυτόματη σύνδεση και στο Facebook, κάτι τέτοιο δεν ήταν εφικτό προς το παρόν. [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 3:41 am
[...] menu openID.Αν και ο μηχανικός του Facebook, Luke Shepard, στη σελίδαhttp://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/05/18/facebook-launches-openid-support-users-can-now-login-with-a…αναφέρει πως η σύνδεση στο Gmail θα σημαίνει απο εδώ και [...]
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
my password got dropped several times and now I am unable to log in my Facebook account
June 16th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
[...] steht Facebook ja noch am Anfang der Implementation. Es werden sicherlich noch einige Features (zumal Facebook die OpenID-Registrierung ja schon angekündigt hat) folgen und kreativ ist die bisherige Idee [...]
June 24th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
[...] Facebook launches OpenID support, the users can now log in with their gmail accounts; [...]
July 5th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Does this work for anyone? I can’t get facebook to login with my google account. It just shows the login page anytime I go to FB
July 24th, 2009 at 8:39 am
HOLA AYUDENME COMO ME CONECTO AL FACEBOOK POR MEDIO DE SURS-IP ES QUE ACA EN LA CLINICA ME LO BLOQUEARON
August 24th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
[...] Earlier this year, Facebook joined the OpenID board of directors as a corporate sustaining member, and said that users would soon thereafter be able to login to the site via OpenID. One month later, the feature launched. [...]
August 25th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
[...] Facebook joined the OpenID board of directors as a corporate sustaining member, and one month later launched OpenID login support with Gmail. Just yesterday, OpenID advocate David Recordon announced he would be joining the company next week [...]
September 8th, 2009 at 5:30 am
ok
September 8th, 2009 at 5:34 am
ok yas
September 10th, 2009 at 6:58 am
I tried to link my facebook account with Verisign PIP and it failed. I can’t see any indication from others that this works; has someone got this to work?
September 14th, 2009 at 2:32 am
It helps and some people feel great ease. Thanks facebook.
September 19th, 2009 at 7:11 am
My linked account doesn’t work. I still have to sign in to facebook manually. It shows that my linked account to google was accepted. Please help. Thanks!
September 20th, 2009 at 11:09 am
im now a member of gmail
September 20th, 2009 at 11:10 am
i like gmail
September 24th, 2009 at 1:43 am
Wow, Its really great feature to use Gmail and OpenID. Thanks for info
November 1st, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Thanks for sharing your idea here. I appreciate your idea, very excellent.
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November 17th, 2009 at 1:16 am
[...] of the wrong providers? Can OpenID be a honey trap in the hands of the wrong providers? Last week Facebook announced it has become an OpenID relying party: any user with OpenID URI can seamlessly login and register to Facebook. After users link their [...]
November 22nd, 2009 at 1:52 pm
It’s good as long as it’s user friendly and easy to manage!
December 21st, 2009 at 9:31 pm
[...] Facebook Connect Includes Google through OpenID from Inside Facebook: Great news and a definite sign of the times. [...]
December 31st, 2009 at 3:14 am
[...] Vía | Inside Facebook. [...]
January 11th, 2010 at 6:53 am
[...] Login to Facebook by linking you Gmail account! via insidefacebook.com [...]
January 26th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
I cannot login to facebook on my laptop computer. I can not login on my blackberry storm 2, to the main site. It will not accept my password and email combination. I know my password. I am so frustrated. I have been through this for weeks. I just want to be able to login when I want to. Now, I can’t do that. I am frustrated as hell!
February 23rd, 2010 at 3:45 am
i am a collage student.my name is mahady.I want…………
February 26th, 2010 at 5:15 am
9 FV dollars vanished when a pop up said i could finis my stable for 9FV dollars and i clicked on it. My stable did not get finised and my FV dollars are 0??
February 27th, 2010 at 7:54 am
that facebook is the best thing u can go on to chatch 2 ur mates and family.
March 9th, 2010 at 4:16 am
Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
April 10th, 2010 at 8:33 am
Once you link your accounts, does that give Facebook access to your GMail/Yahoo address books? Can they see my personal data on Gmail/Yahoo?
April 20th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
i have linked my Gmail account with my facebook
i tried to log in but it cant
somebody help me please !!
May 1st, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Congrats to Facebook for becoming a relaying party. But why not give users an interface to login with OpenID?
You’ve essentially installed a new fancy lock on your door and painted over the key hole.
As I’ve read elsewhere, Facebook doesn’t have an OpenID link on the login page because most users do not know what OpenID is. How ’bout letting them know. In the very least, you could have an alternate OpenID login page.
What game are you playing?
May 2nd, 2010 at 7:21 pm
please this a/c open in facebook
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:17 am
hey srry if itz a stupid ques… i have linked my gmail account with my facebook account… but still when i have logged in with gmail… nd then open facebook in a new tab… it displays the login page..! …. help me guyss…
May 22nd, 2010 at 11:38 am
I agree with Alex. Facebook should let users now when they do something. :angry:
June 30th, 2010 at 11:08 am
i am new on net but i like face book very much
June 30th, 2010 at 11:13 am
will any body tell me that how to make an id on face book
July 16th, 2010 at 2:57 am
I already linked fb acc to my gmail acc,,but still cant worked..I still have to log on to my fb manually,,eventhough I loged into my gmail…is there anyone can help??
thanks
October 3rd, 2010 at 12:50 pm
q feos
October 11th, 2010 at 10:56 am
Personly I feel sorry for whom that had an account on any site before all this login with facebook. Now facebook as you know it has your info, You have to think twice.
January 23rd, 2011 at 5:16 am
hai sye rapidah ahmad harap kmu semua add sye d fb