

Ask HN: Facebook Connect bad for business? - thatusertwo

So Dave Winer has been talking about data silos, here is a link http://scripting.com/stories/2011/01/04/whatIMeanByTheOpenWeb.html<p>Question: If we use Facebook Connect for our service and for some reason Facebook revokes our API key we will be screwed. Our users data will be locked away and our users will no long be able to log onto our service and keep the data they had before. This seems like an overly high price to pay for an increase in accessibility. Thoughts?
======
tomfakes
I've previously built Facebook applications. I've had Facebook turn off my
applications with no warning. It sucks. They've done this to us on a Friday
evening and then headed home, so we've had our business shutdown until Monday
or Tuesday when they got back to us and turned us back on.

If I was building my own web site outside of Facebook, I would not give them
the power to shut me down. By all means, allow a user to link their accounts
to their Facebook accounts, but you _must_ own your own user.

Also, get the security right here - spend the 2 days to work out how to store
passwords (note: don't store passwords!) correctly so that when your user
database is stolen, your users aren't completely screwed.

~~~
thatusertwo
Thanks for the feed back.

------
zubairshams
Also, as a generic facebook user, I feel increasingly queasy when I see some
app I signed up to use is posting all my activity on that app on my facebook
page. Not welcome. Yes, I can control the publishing right for the app on my
facebook page but usually I find myself tend to remove the app entirely. It's
getting prevalent to use facebook connect as login for a new business, but
personally I doubt if this practice is viable and applauded by the user.

------
myearwood
If you are using Facebook connect simply to authenticate users,I don't think
its worth the risk.You should build your own system for this. If you are doing
something more involved and more useful to the facebook user, the risk might
be worth it.

