Facebook announced today that they are now accepting OpenID logins. This means that users of OpenID services like Google, Hotmail and Yahoo will automatically be signed into Facebook if they choose. While this doesn’t really have an earth shattering effect on either side, it does highlight some interesting new technologies: identity federations.
Identity Federations are organizations that agree to share identity between each other. In this case, Facebook is accepting identities from Google and the other providers. This allows the user not to manage so many login id’s and get to use single sign-on. As the OpenID gets more and more adoption, it will be easier to only have a single login for many sites.
Not an earth shattering change for 99% of users, but since I work with identity federation technology, I found it exciting and a great way to showcase technology.
If you want to link accounts between Facebook and one of the identity providers, you go to your accounts settings. Below you will find a new category for “Linked Accounts”, simply add the account type you want and it will ask you to confirm. That’s it! If you are already logging into Google and navigate to Facebook, it will automatically log you in.
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