Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect Now Available

Google announced earlier today the availability of Google Friend Connect through an open beta program. Not to be outdone, Facebook announced that they are ready to unleash Facebook Connect on the public as well. Coincidence? Not at all.

Both Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect represent the ability to log on to many different websites through a single identity. If you think that sounds like Open ID, you are right, but these solutions actually go beyond Open ID by providing additional information like a link to your friends.

Just imagine a world where you only have to keep track of one identification and you don't have to constantly search for and add your friends to each new site. If there's anything that is going to save you from having carpal tunnel syndrome some day, it's something like Google Friend Connect or Facebook Connect.

Unfortunately, just like Beta vs VHS and HD-DvD vs Blu-Ray, we'll have to wait through a standards battle made all the more complicated by a third entry into the equation, MySpace Data Availability, which came out earlier this year and provides similar functionality.

But, at least for those of us that already have Google, Facebook and MySpace accounts, at least we are quickly getting down to just two or three sets of identification needed!