Facebook Connect is an exceptionally useful technology for web developers. Not only can they offer Facebook (
) users one-click registration and sign-in, but by accessing profile and social graph information, Facebook Connect gives developers a way to create a richer experience for their visitors and gives publishers a brand new promotional channel. In January, we brought you a list of 10 great Facebook Connect implementations, and developers across the web have been busy since then coming up with new and innovative ways to integrate with Facebook. So below is a list of 10 more great implementations of Facebook Connect that stand out for their creativity, their usefulness, or their seamless integration.
1. Watchmen on Blu-Ray
Back in May, Warner Bros. announced that the special Director’s Cut Blu-ray edition of the movie Watchmen would utilize Facebook Connect. The disc arrived in stores today, and it does indeed feature Facebook Connect features for those with BD-Live enabled Blu (
)-ray players. That means that people with both Facebook accounts and BD-Live players can invite friends for live viewing parties, exchange comments, and update their Facebook status.
Yes, that’s a lot of prerequisites, but still, the possibilities here are pretty neat. As we noted in May, the new Watchmen integration is “a huge step forward in bringing our social graph to entities beyond the Web.”
Also arriving today is a special edition Blu-ray version of the film 300 that also includes integrated Facebook features (300 and Watchmen were both directed by Zach Snyder).
2. Frenzied Waters
One thing we’re starting to see more and more is the use of Facebook Connect for clever, and in the case of the Disovery Channel’s Frenzied Waters, exceptionally unsettling marketing campaigns. A couple of weeks ago, the Discovery Channel sent out packets to a handful of bloggers containing some gnawed swim trunks, a key with a floating keychain, a warning sign advising against swimming at the beach, and a copy of an obituary customized with personal details about the blogger the package was sent to.
One final item in the package was a shark tooth attached to a piece of brass with the web address “FrenziedWaters.com” stamped on it. It was clearly an invitation to visit the web site, where of course, the ghoulishness continued. Frenzied Waters is an interactive flash movie designed to make watchers feel like they’re in the water being attacked by a shark. If you click on the floating jar all the way to the right (on the splash screen), the application will ask you to connect with Facebook, where it will pull photos and information from your account to create a montage about your death by shark attack.
Our best guess is that Frenzied Waters is a promotional campaign for the Discovery Channel’s upcoming Shark Week (which runs on the network annually in August). If that’s the case, it is definitely brilliant — very, very creepy, but brilliant nonetheless.
3. The Prototype Experience
Like Frenzied Waters, the Prototype Experience uses Facebook Connect as a way to personalize a media campaign and insert you into a starring role. The site is a promotion for the “Prototype” video game from Activision and scores huge points for taking the normally static concept of a trailer and making it interactive.
Once you connect with Facebook, the Prototype Experience pulls in photos and other information from your profile in order to customize the trailer and insert you into the video game’s world. The site adds a viral element by asking you to “infect” your friends in order to enter for a chance to win an Xbox 360.
4. Beware of the Doghouse
Beware of the Doghouse is a brilliant marketing campaign for retailer JCPenney from ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi that utilizes Facebook Connect. The site allows anyone to punish their significant other for a wrongdoing by putting them in the doghouse using Facebook.
Once notified that someone has placed you in the doghouse, users can view a hilarious video about what life in the doghouse is like (above) or they can find out how to get out of the doghouse… by buying diamond jewelry from JCPenney, of course!
5. Eventbee
Facebook has an amazing platform for virally publicizing events, but right now, it doesn’t have any way to support ticket sales. Eventbee solves that problem using Facebook Connect in a very clever way. Not only can events be promoted on Facebook via your friends’ news feeds, but Eventbee offers a way to turn your Facebook friends into ticket sellers.
After your friends have connected to Eventbee via Facebook, they can become “Partners,” and begin promoting your event to their own networks on Facebook. You can allow your partners to offer their friends a special discount rate on tickets and can even give Partners a sales commission on the event tickets they sell.
6. GirlsGuideTo
GirlsGuideTo is a social network just for girls that uses Facebook Connect as its only login option. By using Facebook Connect, the site is able to make sure the network actually stays girls only.
Because the vast majority of people don’t lie on their Facebook profiles, GirlsGuideTo is able to fairly accurately determine the gender of people trying to access the site and keep the guys out. The creators of the site plan to open a sister (brother?) site for guys in the future, and invites any male user attempting to get into GirlsGuideTo to sign up for beta notifications.
Sorry guys, we are still in our beta but the Guys Corner will be open soon. The “GC”, as we call it, is where you can post content, give advice, lend your perspective and provide real time advice. Please fill out this form and we will send you a notice as soon as the Guys Corner is open. Thanks
7. Tweetpo.st
For those of you who find yourselves spending more time on Twitter (
) these days, but still don’t want to give up on Facebook, there’s Tweetpo.st. Tweetpo.st is an application that uses Facebook Connect as a way to automatically update your Facebook status based on your tweeting activity. The site will post any tweet (except @replies and those containing !fb) to Facebook as a status update, but has some nifty features to make your tweets read better on Facebook.
For example, tweets that include a URL can be posted on your Wall as a shared link instead of as status updates, and tweets containing an @username can automatically swap out the username for that person’s Twitter “real name.” Further, tweets containing links can automatically be encoded with Awe.sm, for users of that service.
8. Drop.io
Drop.io’s Facebook Connect integration essentially allows you to share files and other media through your Facebook news feed and status updates. Once you’ve connected your drop to Facebook, any time you add new media to the drop, your friends will be notified via a status update included in their news feeds. They can then click-through to the drop and interact with the media or download the file you’ve shared.
For users that don’t want to publicly share their files, Drop.io offers a “Friendlock” feature, which allows users to specify which friends get invited to a certain drop and get notifications of new media added to the drop.
9. Brightkite
Location-based social network Brightkite () is one of those obvious candidates for Facebook Connect integration, and they’ve done a wonderful job with it. Once you create an account and sign in (which can be done via Facebook Connect), visit your settings page to grant Brightkite deeper access to your Facebook account.
You can specify settings for your checkins, notes, and posted photos, and whether you want those automatically added to your Facebook status, news feed, or photo albums. (Brightkite can also sync each of those types of updates with Twitter.)
10. The Washington Post
In June, the Washington Post pushed out Facebook Connect integration. On the surface, this just adds a way for Facebook users to get by the annoying registration wall the paper puts on its content, and a way to easily share stories from the Post site with your Facebook friends.
But on a deeper level, Facebook Connect could theoretically be very valuable for the newspaper. They could get better ad targeting information from user profiles, for example, or they could increase traffic by syndicating user actions (like commenting) back to Facebook, or they could personalize news based on your age, location, interests, or work — the possibilities are really endless, and show how Facebook Connect could be important for the future of the newspaper business.
BONUS: Xbox Live
Starting this fall, Xbox Live will get an update that will allow you to connect to Facebook directly from your console. That unlocks all sorts of possibilities — sharing scores with Facebook friends, challenging buddies to online games, making photo albums of in-game screenshots, etc.
The actual details are a bit hazy now, so we’ll have to wait until the update is rolled out this autumn to know for sure how cool (or lame) Facebook Connect on the Xbox really is.
More Facebook resources from Mashable
- 5 Great Examples of Facebook Connect on the iPhone
- FACEBOOK FAIL: How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings and Avoid Disaster
- HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook
- 9 Fantastic Facebook Pages for Fashion
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