In the past – if you wanted user activity on your website, you needed to add a sign up process with complicated authentication code just to create an account for the user on your system.

Often visitors are unwilling to register for a new account on a site they do not know – because they simply don’t trust the website with their personal information such as emails and passwords.

To attract more visitors, make it easy for them to join and participate on your website by integrating Facebook Connect / other similar authentication methods.

For the purpose of this article I will discuss in short Facebook Connect.

Facebook Connect allows users with Facebook accounts to login to third party websites (your website) by simply clicking on a button and filling in their Facebook login information.

Facebook returns a user id of the user that successfully logged-in, which allows you to identify that specific person.

This doesn’t only allow you to display the user’s profile picture, a link to their Facebook profile and allow them to comment on your content but also allows you to update their feed dynamically which is seen by their friends and many more.

Here are a few reasons why Facebook Connect could work for your website:

• Trusted Authentication
  Simplified login – the user has total control over permissions granted.
• Real People
  Facebook users commonly use their real name and real identities.
• Share your information
  With Facebook connect users can share your content/products/services with their Facebook friends. This can generate more traffic to your website.
• Friends
  Visitors that are connected to your website can see which of their friends are also using your website.
• Dynamic Privacy settings
  With Facebook connect a Facebook user brings their privacy settings with them to your site. This builds trust for your website which means users are more likely to return to your site in future.

In conclusion: I expect a lot of websites, especially news and social websites, to implement Facebook connect/similar authentication methods in 2010. Implementing it on your website will give you the edge in 2010 by giving your customers the opportunity to give you feedback and share your product/ service/content with their friends online.