Sexy Widget is not a news breaking blog.
That Twitter plans on implementing Facebook Connect isn't really news - especially as their CEO has publicly said that they would.
But I do think that the motivations are pretty interesting. Twitter is a big, ambitious service with enormous aspirations. It's not inconceivable to think that they might one day be bigger than Facebook, and they already compete head to head in owning the status / update space. Given these tensions, the decision for Twitter to cede some portion of their registrations to Facebook is not one to be taken lightly.
In other words, there must be a pretty damn good reason that Twitter would let Facebook own some percentage of their logins.
Here's what I think the reason is. I think it's about the river - more specifically, setting up brand new Twitter users with friends to follow.
A few weeks ago I was at the Berkeley Play conference where Twitter co-founder Biz Stone was the keynote speaker. During that keynote, Biz mentioned that "new user experience" was one of the company's top priorities. He hinted at things like exploring the ability to subscribe to topics as an easy way for new users to build out a compelling content river / newsfeed.
More recently, Twitter CEO Ev Williams was quoted as saying (re: new user experience), "It's amazing anyone uses Twitter today. Twitter is hard."
Clearly, exploring the best way to get new users hooked on Twitter with a custom river of tweets made just for them is high on the company's list.
It's not a difficult jump to see what Facebook Connect would be a tempting proposition for Twitter. People signing up for Twitter with Facebook Connect could easily, automatically, instantaneously, be set to follow their Facebook Friends on Twitter. With two clicks - one to initiate Facebook Connect, and one to confirm the connection - new users would not only be signed up for Twitter, but would also have a prepopulated river of content from people that they have a real world connection to.
I mentioned in my recent Facebook Connect Pros and Cons post that websites based on the follower / friend model will be intrigued by this aspect of Facebook Connect. Twitter is no different.
