Facebook's f8: Privacy and the Open Graph

Facebook's annual developer conference is going down as we speak in California. It started this Wednesday, and right from the get-go, Zuck was making some big announcements during the opening keynote. Here are some of the takeaways from the information that has come out of the conference so far, in no particular order. Facebook Connect is dead in favor of OAuth 2.0. Facebook Credits are still on the way. Facebook's Social Bar goes up against the Meebo bar and Wibya. And, Facebook has taken over the web in the form of their new Open Graph.

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Google Adds OAuth Support

Google made an announcement this week that could have a profound impact on Gmail.  Google has added OAuth support to Gmail, a feature that will give third-party applications access to certain content from your email account without requiring the password to the account.  This is something that you may be familiar with from Twitter, who added OAuth support about a year ago. Rather than handling your username and password, the third party requests access directly from Gmail much like Facebook Connect.

The move is primarily to ensure a more secure gmail, but it could have other benefits.  Potentially, this move opens up the doors to third-party developers to create customs applications to sit on top of Gmail.  Not unlike Gmail's Labs, third-party developers would be able to create applications that could do anything from fixing little quirky things within Gmail to adding completely new functionality.

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