Virgin announces new site, Facebook Connect for planes
MIAMI—Virgin used Alex Hunter's presentation at the Future of Web Apps to announce its new Virgin.com website, due to enter closed beta in the next six weeks. The new site will include a lot of social features that allow users …
Context & Ripple Effects
Virgin's announcement at the Future of Web Apps lands mid-race in the federated identity war that opened in 2008, when Facebook answered MySpace with Facebook Connect and Google countered for site owners with Friend Connect. By early 2009 Facebook is pushing its login layer beyond websites into devices and third-party platforms — an effort visible in Facebook Connect's rollout on iPhone. Virgin putting Connect into a new social Virgin.com and onto its planes shows brands adopting identity infrastructure rather than building their own.
First-order effects
- Virgin.com enters closed beta within six weeks as a social property built on Facebook identities, and Virgin becomes an early brand to deploy Connect in a physical setting — its planes — rather than just on the web.
Second-order effects
- Every airline and travel brand watching this now faces a build-vs-borrow choice on social features; competitors can either license Facebook's identity graph or wait for rivals like Google Friend Connect and Twitter's forthcoming answer (Twitter's answer to Facebook Connect) to mature.
Third-order effects
- If identity layers keep spreading from sites to devices to physical spaces, the industry structure shifts toward a few platform-owned login standards, raising long-term dependence questions for consumer brands and potential regulatory scrutiny over who controls cross-site identity data.
The trend: Federated identity is expanding from website logins into devices, apps, and physical spaces, turning Facebook Connect into default social infrastructure for consumer brands.