With the news that Facebook will be releasing a flurry of new apps this year, it’s somewhat surprising to learn that some of these will arrive without the need to sign in via the social platform, and will instead allow users to log in anonymously.
The move was revealed in a profile of Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the company, published by Bloomberg Businessweek today. According to the article, while the freshly launched Paper app (below) – the first product to come out of the new Facebook Creative Labs – will still require you to log in via Facebook, future apps may well allow for more anonymized logins that don’t rely on real identity.
Until now, Zuckerberg has been against people not using their real identities online. However, the tide does seem to be turning for the social behemoth’s founder, as he was quoted as saying: “I definitely think we’re at the point where we don’t need to keep on only doing real identity things”, before going on to describe the necessity of using your real identity for everything as “somewhat of a burden”. That’s quite a long way to come from the person who once described having more than one identity an example of “a lack of integrity” to David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect.
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It’s unclear at this stage exactly how many apps will come out of the labs this year, and what percentage of those might allow for anonymous users, but one thing is for sure, it’s a move that’s very unlike Facebook as we’ve come to know it.
➤ Facebook Turns 10: The Mark Zuckerberg Interview [Bloomberg Businessweek]
Featured Image Credit – Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images
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