Facebook launches OpenID support – Now login with Gmail accounts

Facebook announced that users would soon be able to login to the site via OpenID. Recently, Facebook has officially become an OpenID relying party: as users can register for Facebook using their Gmail accounts and any OpenID provider that supports automatic login. And now Facebook has become the largest OpenID relying party on the web.

Now, once users link their Facebook account to a Gmail address (or OpenID URL), they’ll be automatically logged in when they go to Facebook after having logged into that service. Facebook says that in its user testing so far, users who register through OpenID actually get engaged with Facebook more quickly than others.

Facebook says:

In tests we’ve run, we’ve noticed that first-time users who register on the site with OpenID are more likely to become active Facebook users. They get up and running after registering even faster than before, find their friends easily, and quickly engage on the site. We’ll continue to integrate more OpenID providers into our registration and account linking flows as they support automatic login,

To link an existing account with a Google or OpenID account, users can go to their Account Settings page and choose an account in the Linked Accounts section. Yahoo and MySpace are also listed here, but a Facebook prompt says:

Note that your accounts from Myspace and Yahoo do not allow for automatic login.

Follow us on twitter and facebook to stay up-to-date with different technologies around the globe.