The Washington Post has pushed out Facebook Connect integration, allowing readers to login to the site using their Facebook credentials as opposed to a WashingtonPost.com account.
On the surface, this is a really simple implementation that makes it easy to get past the registration wall that The Washington Post employs on some articles. You can also share stories with your Facebook friends with one click. More interesting, however, is considering some of the things that the newspaper could do in the future with Facebook Connect, specifically as it pertains to community and advertising.
More Dynamic Community Features
Currently, The Washington Post uses Pluck to power a variety of social networking features on the site. Users can use this ID to comment on stories, and have those comments aggregated on a user profile that other members of the site can access. There are also simple photo galleries, an option to include a biography, and a “messages” tab that looks to be a microblog of sorts.
However, all of these features, frankly, should be powered by Facebook (
). Facebook Connect would enable The Washington Post to import all of this data from the social network, instantly populating its community with vibrant content. Not to mention, The Post could gain significant traffic, as actions taken within its community – like commenting or chat – could be syndicated back into Facebook. As it stands now, most of the user profiles feel ghostly, with no user pictures or personality, just a long list of comments from a seemingly anonymous individual.
The paper does hint that these types of features might be in the works, with Goli Sheikholeslami, General Manager & Vice President of Washington Post Digital saying in a statement that “our long-term strategy is to move towards creating an increasingly personalized experience for our users, allowing them to carry their social network onto our site.”
Improved Targeted Advertising
The main reason that The Washington Post uses a registration wall on its site is so that it can get data about you, like your gender, age, and occupation. This data allows the paper to serve fairly targeted advertising. However, unless you’re a regular reader of the paper, it’s a bit much to ask for simply to read one article:
On the other hand, if you already have a Facebook login, reading those articles is now as simple as clicking a button and logging in. And, The Washington Post can grab that same data – in addition to other tidbits like how many friends you have, what your interests are, and your relationship status – to serve up targeted advertising.
Why Other Newspapers Should Follow Suit
It’s not surprising that The Washington Post is one of the first major mainstream publications to implement Facebook, considering their CEO is on the company’s board. Meanwhile, other papers should take note of what they could potentially be offering users and advertisers through Facebook Connect. It’s a strong alternative – or at least compliment – to a proprietary registration wall and social network. At present, there would seem to be both a lot of engagement and targeted advertising dollars being left on the table.
Sometimes you’re not that concerned about features; you just want to get the job done as fast as possible. Often, after trying out many applications, I’ve settled for the simple and quick ones instead of the complex, slow apps. 
