Early on Facebook made the decision that their users are real people with real names and an identity that mirrors life beyond the internet. Whether they realized it at that time or not, that was a great decision. I dunno if this widget will be successful, but I've seen a number of people using connect on disqus, gawker, et al. and it's actually kind of cool.
I would love to think that they meant to do that all along, because that's the true killer feature of Facebook. I like looking at my friends list and seeing names rather than handles.
I'd change my HN name to Rory if I had the choice: I'd rather have this tied to my name.
I'd much rather have real names used on blogs and news sites, personally. It feels cozier that way. When I comment on other blogs I always use my full name.
Also - apologies, I was in a rush to class earlier - there's a difference between a social network and a social news site, as you said. Facebook's killer idea works because Facebook is a social network. There're other situations where using Facebook for comments would be really nice. Commenting on essays and academic papers, for instance, because when you're writing about intellectual work it's useful to talk with the weight of your name rather than anonymity.
This is more analogous to Google Friend Connect's wall widget. 1) It's for people using Facebook to leave wall comments; 2) This widget is a proof of concept for their connect model.
Why? Everything available to Facebook, I voluntarily put there. Just as anything I say in a comment in their widget will be voluntarily contributed. As a Facebook consumer, a single identity across all my comments tied to a service I already enjoy makes Facebook that much more useful to me. Let them do with the data I gave them as they please.
Hell, I am far more concerned with how much credit agencies seem to know about me, and I never like giving my information to them =p.
As purely a user (and fan) of JS-Kit, I feel the need to mention that JS-Kit comments have had Facebook Connect implemented for a while now. I use them for my blog. It takes a couple seconds to get up and running (like Disqus, from what I gather), and they are quite customizable.
This isn't competing with Disqus at all. Disqus totally replaces blog commenting with a fairly trivial integration, and even syncs the comments back to your database where you can retain ownership. What is a blogger going to do, put this Facebook widget at the bottom of every post?
I think the marketing value alone makes it worth implementing into a site.
update: I just took a brief look at the Facebook comment widget and I think it's missing one feature. Facebook connect was meant for augmenting an existing login system that a site has but it doesn't allow site's own login user (when they are not logged in as Facebook user) to post comments as the user. Not as configurable as I would like.
Interesting to see how this plays out. Facebook is entering a market that likes the existing products a lot. On the other hand, it's got a far tighter layout - visually, Facebook comments appeal much more to me more than Disqus' - and Facebook has the advantage of being a very large player.
I just spent the last 20 minutes trying to get the comments on my tumblr. So far unsuccessful, I'm not even sure if its possible because of their security settings. This will never reach main stream. Disqus takes 2 minutes to setup and implement.
"Never" seems a bit hasty. Facebook very rarely lets things stay non-streamlined for long. They usually start rough and then iterate until they've got something that' insanely polished.
I don't think that's true. Remember beacon? But you are right "never" is a bit hasty. They will have to fundamentally change the way this works for it to be mainstream. The dev app interface alone is too confusing for your average blogger.
Beacon was very quickly dumped after the massive backlash that was brought up upon it. I have no doubt that had there not been the massive public resentment they would have quickly iterated on it and made it into a very viable and interesting product.
The parent's post is quite correct. They could've spend months polishing beacon and it would've still been doomed to failure. Instead they put it out there and when it didn't get the desired response they canned it. If the comments system gets any traction whatsoever (and doesn't become a pr disaster like beacon was) I fully expect them to very quickly polish the product and make it very usable for people that aren't the early adopters.
