Facebook's users can already use a “log in with Facebook” button to sign up for apps that let them listen to music, play games, read the news and monitor fitness activities. But using the button allows apps to access information related to the Facebook user's identity.
With the anonymous login, Facebook will have information about users but the apps won't. Zuckerberg said the feature will let more people to try out new apps that they may not trust yet with their personal information. App developers have the option of including the anonymous login as a feature, but they won't have to.
The company is also launching more granular controls that let people determine the types of information they share with apps when they want to use their Facebook identity to log in. Previously, apps could decide what information they wanted to access on people's Facebook pages - such as people's birthday, friends list or email address. Now, people can uncheck each, or all of these things.
Analysts suspect Facebook's evolution isn't as much an epiphany about privacy as it is about Zuckerberg' realization that the company has to take steps to ensure it holds on to its users and grapples with more competition.
“If Facebook has some sense that they are going to walk away because they don't feel like they are being put first, then they have a real problem on their hands. So, they are giving users some new features that they have been looking for a long time,” said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.
