A while back I talked about “no password” website login systems where websites can use sites like Facebook or Twitter to authenticate their users. Since then, Facebook’s login system “Facebook Connect” has been deprecated and replaced by OAuth, an open login system (detailed in the previous post) that is used by many sites, including Twitter. This switcheroo isn’t the most interesting news to come from Facebook – the change to OAuth was a necessary part of the new Facebook Graph system. Facebook Graph lets other websites and applications get access to a Facebook user’s data and some of their friends’ data. Graph is much more capable than Connect – whereas Connect granted access to some user data, Graph provides a consistent, machine-readable interface to all of Facebook’s data. Pandora is already using users’ favorite artist data from Graph to cater their streaming radio. Graph also enables Pandora to show you what your friends have been listenting to. Along with Graph, Facebook is launching Social Plugins. A Social Plugin is a small snippet of HTML that web authors can easily embed into their sites to let any Facebook user “Like” a page or comment on that page without having to log in. These Social Plugins are attractive to web authors because they are super easy to install and can help attract traffic. Of course, as Facebook’s data becomes more open, user’s have less privacy. After a breif snafu, Facebook made the new systems opt-in. Websites have to request authorization from you before they can access your data – with one huge exception. By default, Facebook shares most everything about a user when even just a friend of the user authorizes a website. I am not at all comfortable with that so I blocked all of my information from being shared through friends.