Facebook has introduced a new service, called the "Facebook Connect", to integrate the rest of the World Wide Web more seamlessly with its (user-generated) content.

The new service will allow users of this social networking site to login to partner websites using their Facebook credentials and see their friends' activities on that web site. Connect will also "track" your activities on the partner site and display them on your profile updates.

According to a recent NY Times report, the Connect service will start with a few websites like City search and will soon integrate the likes of Discovery Channel, Digg, Geni and the San Francisco Chronicle and many others with whom discussions are currently on.

According to some, the new service will allow previously very unsociable websites to interact with its readers. At the same time, from a user perspective, it will be much easier to use one user credential for accessing multiple websites and make the dissemination of information a quick, personalized task, instead of something very rudimentary such as sharing a link over a chat window, for example.

However, there is an increasing concern regarding privacy when it comes to services like these. In 2007, the much controversial Beacon advertising program was introduced on Facebook. It did pretty much the same thing as Connect does now. However, with Beacon, there were privacy concerns and disgust over issues like spoiling a surprise gift opportunity for a friend when it "updated" the users' Facebook profile with an update on what he just purchased from a partner website!

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief, is all for privacy when he says "Facebook Connect users must understand what's going on and have control over it." Facebook has this time round chosen a careful approach with services like these addressing the privacy concerns and enabling more user control over the information shared.

As of now, there is no revenue-sharing roadmap/mechanism in place for the Connect service. In the future though, partner sites could use your personal information (with your explicit permission, of course!) to display targeted ads while you're browsing their services. This is especially important in the context where it has been widely observed that social networking websites are a bad place for advertisers to be in. An advertisement certainly looks out of place on a page where you are sharing personal thoughts and feelings with your friends and recent surveys substantiate that thought.

Research firm IDC has in a recent survey observed that only 57 per cent of advertisements on social networking websites saw a click, out of which only 11 per cent led to a final purchase. Facebook, over the last few years has been under immense pressure to get its revenue to match the hype and the market share it has managed to garner.

With $235 million raised in capital last year, Facebook is on the lookout for more avenues to increase revenues, and services like Connect seems to be the way forward.