The attention on Facebook lately has been around their new "deals" offering, which is awesome and will undoubtedly change the way we market and provide service to customers. At the same time, they announced a single sign-on application that will allow you to sign into a host of other applications through your Facebook login. For a while now, web developers have been able to add a Facebook sign-in application to their offerings to simplify the process of getting through a page. Companies like Groupon, Yelp, Pandora and even CNN are doing it.
So what's so cool about this? It's removing anonymity from the web. We've all been burdened by people making very abrasive and negative comments on forums without identifying themselves. They've done it on our blogs, our customer service forums, our newspapers and through other applications like Amazon user comments that ultimately impact a brand and its longevity on the market.
What this emerging trend of using a single sign-on does is it forces people to use their real identity when they're posting comments. If people know you by your name (and there's a chance someday your comments will show up in your Facebook feed or in profiles for your friends) you will probably give negative commenting a second thought. And so will your competitors who are out to bash your brand. We're all beginning to take notice of our personal social brands. This isn't quite a revolution yet, but by revealing identities, customer service organizations will be able to start separating the valid and non-valid posts, and determine which are from legitimate customers.
