Honestly, it’s pretty easy to do. But when searching for documentation, it wasn’t easy to find exactly what I wanted to do, so I figured I should blog about it.

What I needed was a way to easily connect my existing web application with facebook connect. What’s Facebook Connect? In a nutshell, it allows users to log in and register to your site via their facebook credentials. Here’s some more in – depth detail if you’re looking for more information; this tutorial assumes you know what the deal is with Facebook Connect and want to get it onto your application soon.

I added facebook connect to a site running PHP and using MySQL for the database; this tutorial assumes you will be doing so as well. I used Facebook’s PHP API to connect my site, and the same goes with that. If you’ve ever build a facebook application before, you’re familiar with Facebook’s API.

The last assumption I make is that you have already built a site with a full user login system, your site allows cookies, and caters to javascript enabled browsers. Basically, you built this site of yours after 2002 or so.

After the break we’ll get to it.

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About two years ago, when the concept of “Social Networking” was all the rage, I had quit Facebook, in the middle of my college career of all times. I had done this, to a degree, because I had wanted to feel like a maverick, which is somewhat humbling to admit. What’s even more humbling to admit is the primary reason I had left Facebook, which was that I’m not that social of a dude. Sorry, world!

About a year and a half ago, I began my current lifestyle of “web developer,” working for business people in startups that loved to throw the words “Social Network” in whatever business plan/pitch they were using to spread their idea. I would warn anyone who would listen that they were throwing around buzz words of an idea destined to fail.

Why was I so unconvinced of “Social Networking?” Because it wasn’t making any real (see: advertising dollars) money for their companies, be it Facebook or MySpace. Not enough money to ever match the investments made to either of them. Lo and Behold, a few months later the world recognized what I had forseen.

My friends would then ask me what I think companies like Facebook and MySpace needed to do in order to (surv/thr)ive. I had responded that they wouldn’t; that eventually all of these social networks would be too much for the average user to take, and they’d simply get sick of logging into different website and remembering different credentials etc etc.

What the next step was, I told my friends, was for someone to make identity ubiqutous throughout a user’s internet experience. That is; grant the user the ability to float from one .com to another without losing their identities, and without requiring them to log-on to different sites constantly.

This was about a year and a half ago, and over this year, Facebook has released it’s Connect platform, Google has Friend Connect, MySpace has MySpaceId, all looking to do what I thought they were gonna do in the first place.

So if you’ve gotten this far in my very young blog, you’ve discovered one reason for it’s creation:

The next time some shit pops off on the internet, I’ll have HARD EVIDENCE that I had already forseen it’s happening.

Yes, I’m a very petty person.

The next post will be on the future of Identiy and the Internet.