Back in December 2008, Facebook announced Facebook Connect – a service that lets people use their Facebook login and identity on third party sites that provide integration, like The Point.

Connect!

If you already use The Point and have a Facebook account (who doesn’t!?) clicking the Facebook Connect button will link your account on The Point to your Facebook account and you’ll be able to use your Facebook login from then on.

New users of The Point can just click the Facebook Connect button when joining a campaign for the first time, and a quick Facebook login is all it takes – no account setup, no account activation.

Your Facebook login information is never sent to or shared with The Point in any way; it’s entirely handled by Facebook.

Your Portable Identity – You Can Take it With You

Once you’re connected, your identity on Facebook – your name, profile pic – even your friends – will be available on The Point.

Tired of that profile pic?  Change it once on Facebook and it’ll be visible on The Point.

Your Facebook profile information is subject to the same privacy controls on The Point as you set in Facebook.

Let Your Friends Know What You’re Up To on The Point

When you join a campaign on The Point, we’ll ask if you want to publish a Facebook feed item to share it with your Facebook friends.  You’ll see a preview of what the feed item will look like, and have the chance to post it or, of course, say ‘No Thanks’.  It’s up to you.

You’ll also see your friends’ activity on The Point on their feeds so you can keep up with what they’re up to.

What’s next?

Of course, what’s Facebook integration without friends, right?  We’ll be adding features over time to let you see which of your Facebook friends are also using The Point and let you invite them to connect.

For example, you might want to know which of your Facebook friends are already members of a campaign you’ve joined.  Or maybe you want to invite your Facebook friends to a campaign on The Point.

What about Groupon?

For those of you using Groupon in Chicago (and soon Boston, and beyond!) to get great deals through the power of collective buying, you probably know that Groupon is powered by The Point.  We’ll be making the Facebook Connect features of The Point available to all Groupon users in the coming weeks.

• Newspapers are bad at flash mob coverage.
• Illegal flash mob pool parties, Google, and the cops who get pulled into it all.
• “New Media” is old hat.
• www.thechairmanismyhomeboy.com
• The left, collective action, our generation, and dilemma.
• When was the last time you really put some thought into public choice theory?
• And finally, a pretty great analysis of all of the numbers emerging on increased Internet and politics.

-Joe Ahearn of SleepWhenDeadNYC.

“Don’t underestimate Facebook,” says Joe Ahearn of the social networking site.

[Along with Entertainment4Every1 and showISmonster] SleepWhenDeadNYC, led by Ahearn, put together a huge show that was scheduled to take place at the Jamaica Bay Research Wildlife Preserve. Over 10 bands were slated to preform and over 400 people had RSVPed via Facebook. However, a little over twelve hours before the show was to go off, the weather report pushed the Parks Department to revoke the permit that SleepWhenDead had worked for over a month to procure. It would be another month before they could host another show.

Fortunately for them, with less than a day to maneuver, they moved the show to an accommodating venue in Brooklyn. What trouble did they run into along the way to doing so?

In the past, Ahearn has used a mailing list service and worked with a “decently sized” list, though he was recently booted for “not properly documenting” how he collects his subscribers. And since there is a cap on how many emails can be sent through Gmail in a day (500), his 1000-contact-strong mailing list is too big to manage there.

So in this event, he turned to Facebook.

“One of the bands started the [Facebook] ‘event.’ As a side-note, when I organize these things, I don’t usually let people see [the RSVP list]. ‘Cause I invite 900 peoople and if it looks like not a lot of people are going to show up, I don’t want someone to think, “Oh shit. Uh…” and not come.

“This one was big. Right before show got moved, 400 people marked that they were going to be there. But it was opened under this other kid’s page and if it is opened from by someone else, they have to make you an administrator [and that didn't happen]. So I kept calling him over the past two weeks telling him to make me an admin, but he didn’t know how to. And it was frustrating, especially when it came to moving the show around.”

Fortunately, at the last minute, the message was disseminated accordingly by various folks related to the show and it was an overwhelming success.

• Forbes takes a look at Kiva and its founders, Matt and Jessica Flannery.
• Charlie Beckett of the Polis Journalism Society: Does the Internet make things more democratic?
• SleepWhenDeadNYC puts on a steroid-pumped flash-mob festival. Is this the flash mobs more mature cousin? What is this?
• Perhaps talk of Egypt and Facebook activism will fill the void in conversation choices left by the end of primary season.
• Adeline Flash Mob advertises upcoming (ninja) mob, video.
• Have you heard about the 10-year-old girl who masked herself as an Internet pedophile?
• A look at Guerrilla campaigning through the eyes of Smokefree Boise.
• And finally, there is no shortage of reportage on the rise of “computer literate” terrorism.

• “Islam’s Advance”? Facebook.
• Investors take their trash talk to the Internet.
• Fundraising for Myanmar is apparently “sluggish.”
• Campaigning on a budget is made easy with the wonders of Internet video – Bet you didn’t know that.
• Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr brushes off “unelectable” criticism by suggesting that the Internet will be a valuable organizing tool for his campaign.

• Feeling otherwise alone, mommies find a friend in online social networking.
• Human Rights watch claims that an activist who used Facebook to organize a general strike in Egypt was beaten and threatened with rape.
• A plan to grab the Olympic torch by way of flash mob was thwarted when the organizer was arrested by the Chinese government.
• Social media leveraged against Sen. Obama.
• Facebook quickly announces its answer to MySpace Data Availability.
• Obama channels Alinsky, who encouraged the importance of getting people invested into an issue by making any contribution possible, no matter how small it might be.
• Chinese dissenters are coordinating general strikes by way of Facebook and SMS.
• Do you find YouTube to be offensive due to its relative godlessness?
• And finally, if you don’t like a candidate, the Internet is a lovely place for a smear campaign (Bonus quiz: Which Democratic candidate refuses to put his hand on the Bible, preferring instead to put it on the Quran?)

• Apparently, the Facebook community hates Microsoft.
• Internet fund raising is reportedly keeping Sen. Clinton in the race.
• Online community membership “swells” as the market for social networking software triples.
• Flash Mob, noun, “A sort of secret event where a select few are told to gather and perform some zany act of hilarious consequence at a random place and time.”
• Burmese blogs help to mobilize fund raising efforts in response to cyclone-related destruction.
• George Oats of Flickr very generously discusses how to Internet communities best flourish.
• Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, assets that that our “tethered appliances” like iPhones and Blackberrys create two classes of Internet-user, and this gets in the way of positive netizenry.
• Finally, if your local paper is shutting down due to layoffs, entrepreneurs like Rich Carr might suggest that you start your own news source online.

• After a decade and a half of hype about being a “transformative agent for politics,” 2008 is already becoming known as the “Year of the Cyber Campaign.”
• Fox Business examines how mobile banking will transform microfinance and Eric Everson examines the examination [and more].
• Struggling? Facebook it.
• A gander at how folks in Mozambique and Serbia are using the Internet in times of national transition.
• Looking for a way to bring attention to your cause? Call Rosanna Arquette (and Ellen Page and Judd Apatow and maybe Jennifer Aniston), have them appear in a series of videos and encourage supporters to “spread them like wildfire.”
• And finally, in my day, music blogs were where snotty know-it-alls typed about their predicable infatuations with post-punk, no-wave, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, and ironic appreciations for the musical stylings of Frank Stallone — not bases for organizing concerts.

• Egyptians are using Facebook to defy government attempts to keep incidents of police brutality quiet. One young woman, Esraa Abdel Fatah, 27, is highlighted for or organizational efforts using the site.
• A flash mob takes on Bath Abbey. The mob freezes for five minutes, people stare, and the The Bath Chronicle deems it a success (seriously).
• UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is apparently looking to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for tips on raising lots of cash via the Internet.
• Speaking of Sen. Obama, it’s not just the money that he’s raising online that will potentially make him a powerbroker in the party, even if he loses.
• And finally, another discussion about the rise of shareholder activism and it’s impact on US corporations as the economy continues on a downturn.