Another great day for OpenID: Facebook, one of the world’s biggest social networks, is adopting the standard as a Relying Party. That means Facebook members can log in to the site with an OpenID from providers like Yahoo!, MySpace, Google, and many more. Also they will be able to sign up to Facebook with an OpenID.

However, the OpenID integration is not implemented yet. If we can believe the announcement, Facebook will auto-detect the OpenID provider if users are already logged into it when coming to Facebook:

Facebook will automatically check to see if users have logged into any OpenID account when they hit Facebook.com, and give them the option to automatically login to Facebook without entering new information.

It will be interesting to see how this works, especially if it works with all providers and not just some of the big ones. Though if it works smoothly, this flow will reduce much of the hassle of OpenID for users. They would not have to provide their OpenID to a relying party anymore if they’re already signed into the OpenID provider already. Actually, it is recommended to sign in to the provider by the beginning of each web browsing session anyway, because it effectively reduces the danger of phishing.

If Facebook integrates OpenID well, it will surely boost OpenID. First, it will signal that large sites don’t have to become providers only. And second, user experience will be improved greatly. So hopefully, Facebook’s implementation will be live soon and we can check it again.

Only one week after PayPal joined the board of the OpenID Foundation as a sustaining corporate member, Facebook followed suit yesterday. It is the first social network to become a board member.

By joining the board Facebook hopes

that we can take the success of Facebook Connect and work together with the community to build easy-to-use, safe, open and secure distributed identity frameworks for use across the Web.

While it is excting to see a popular brand like Facebook joining the board of the OpenID Foundation, it has not made any announcement if it will implement OpenID in any way. So if you hoped to login to the social network with your OpenID already, you will be disappointed. Though it would be awesome if it was possible someday, of course. In the meantime Facebook’s experiences with Facebook Connect and user experience could help OpenID become more user friendly. It seems this is what the OpenID Foundation is hoping for as well:

Given the popularity and positive user experience of Facebook Connect, we look forward to Facebook working within the community to improve OpenID’s usability and reach.

Anyway, we definitely hope Facebook’s contribution to OpenID will further its success.