This is BIG. Facebook has now officially become an OpenID partner.
This means new Facebook users and existing ones can join and login using their Gmail accounts or any other OpenID provider.
If you’re an existing member, you can link your account with a Google, Yahoo, MySpace, or OpenID account by visiting your Account Settings page, selecting ‘linked accounts’ and selecting the provider of your choice.
“Existing and new users can now link their Facebook accounts with their Gmail accounts or with accounts from those OpenID providers that support automatic login. Once a user links his or her account with a Gmail address or an OpenID URL, logs in to that account, then goes to Facebook, that user will already be logged in to Facebook.”
Unfortunately, I’m have issues with this aspect of the integration as well as linking my myopenid.com account, however, the fact that Facebook has finally made the move leaves nothing but a smile on my face – bugs will be fixed.
InsideFacebook broke the news and has an in depth interview with Facebook engineer and OpenID Foundation board member Luke Shepard, I highly recommend you read.
The most interesting aspect to all this is Facebook officially becomes the largest OpenID party on the web.
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