Facebook joins OpenID board

Facebook will host an OpenID Design Summit next week

Facebook has become a board member of the OpenID Foundation, joining tech giants such as Google, IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo and VeriSign in a drive to give internet users a single digital identity to access many of the web's services.

Mike Schroepfer, director of engineering at Facebook, said in a blog post that the move signalled a willingness to work with the community to build "easy-to-use, safe, open and secure distributed identity frameworks" for use across the web.

Facebook said that it will host an OpenID Design Summit next week at its headquarters in California to demonstrate its new affiliation.

Schroepfer also used the blog post to highlight the success of Facebook Connect, a single sign-on service that essentially competes with OpenID.

"In the two months since Facebook Connect became generally available, over 4,000 sites and desktop applications have gone live with the service," he wrote.

"Users can now log in to sites across the web using their Facebook account, bring their identity and friends with them, and share information and experiences using the same features as they would with applications on Facebook. "

It is still unclear whether Facebook will make the Connect service compatible with OpenID.

A Facebook spokesperson claimed that joining the OpenID board was "the first move towards becoming more open".

The company had previously been considered too proprietary because of its Connect offering.