Friend Connect
Title
Friend Connect
Short, concise description of the idea
Implementing "Friends Connect", "Facebook Connect", plus similar social networking connection systems in with lj's friends list and groups lists for lj users.
Full description of the idea
The reason I have stuck with Livejournal for 8-9 years has been Livejournal's reliability and on-going features. In recent years the post security feature tops the list of the reason I choice to remain with Livejournal.
I do have some suggestions to further innovate the post security features, which should open my lj to a wider audience, while still keeping post security. That suggestion would be to integrate Google's "Friend Connect" and Facebook's "Facebook connect" in with lj's "Friends list" feature, enabling non-lj users to be included in a friends list security group.
The concept it to build trust list with these social networking connection systems, where in a user's profile, they can build trust user/group lists that enable users of these external sites to have access to "friends only" and "custom" posts. For instance, there can be a listing of accepted "facebook connect" users that will be able to view my "friends only" posts. As for building groups of users for "custom" posts, those users could also be added to a custom group. Of course like OpenID and other related systems, you would need to be authenticated to that site, where your session would carry over to lj, thus granting access to friends only and custom posts.
Additionally, there should be some way to link your livejournal and facebook account, which kind of sorta existed with the whole "livejournal connect" thing. But it wasn't a true two way connection. I'm not sure I'd need my facebook authentication session to allow me to post to lj, but that would be nice for some people. Regardless, facebook/google users that don't want to blog via lj or any blogging system won't have to and could just view secured posts.
One concern would be disabling the public view of these "friend connect" users on the actual user profile, where there needs to be a setting that enables viewing these lists requiring being logged in and a part of that person's friends list.
A tricky feature that seems more a facebook type issue is the ability to syndicate friends only post feeds to these external sites. I can deal with not having that feature, where I could manually do that, pointing my trusted friends to my posts.
Lots of huge potential using "friend connect" and "facebook connect"! You already have OpenID and facebook is starting to play nice with that!
An ordered list of benefits
- Enables users of external sites access to view "fiends only posts" and "custom posts".
- Facebook/google/other users that don't want to blog via lj or any blogging system won't have to and could just view secured posts.
- Has potential to increase traffic to lj user's blog, keeping secured posts secured.
- (see full description)