Techcrunch launches with Facebook connect – what are the implications?

Tonight Techcrunch announced that it had integrated via a Wordpress plugin, an implementation of Facebook connect.

What does it do? It allows you to sign in super easy with your name and Facebook password, and then leave a comment. Facebook automatically includes a pic from Facebook as an avatar as well as your name, linked to your Facebook profile.

What’s the implications of this?

If your a commenter and blogger:

…like me I’d be weary.

I want people to come to my blog, not my Facebook profile. Facebook is after all designed and best used with real friends.

Secondly, I’ll loose the chance of scoring a bit of Google juice via the link to my blog. The Facebook comment’s links have nofollow attributes (I guess implemented on the Techcrunch side), meaning they can’t pass on PageRank, not to your blog and not even to your Facebook profile.

If your Facebook:

I’d be pretty dissapointed that were not getting all that PageRank form all those comments with links. Still, its an opportunity to cement Facebook as an identity repository standard.

If your a Facebook user: (Like me)

Well the downside is your much more likely to be found by people that find you interesting and that you don’t know. If your egotistical and accept all those invitations, in no time your Facebook experience will be boring. Facebook works best with real friends.

But it also an opportunity to show your friends how clever you are with no extra effort. Your comments go straight to your Friendfeed. They also might just think your an opinionated twirp, or really not interested what you think of the Springbok rugby team.

If your Techcrunch (or an implementing site):

Excellent. This is great marketing. All the people leaving comments are effectively word of mouth marketeers for your blog. The comments will appear in hundreds of Friendfeeds. A marketing dream come true. And you don’t loose any Pagerank to pages you don’t want to. Bonus.