Instant Personalization is a new service from Facebook that's like a more fluid version of Facebook Connect. When you're logged into Facebook and you visit a site using it, the site will have access to the public parts of your profile. The vision seems to be that eventually most of the sites you visit will be automatically personalized for you.

Facebook began by testing Instant Personalization with a handful of popular existing sites. But the interesting question for us is: what new things could be built using it that couldn't even have existed before? What new things could you do if you already knew users and their friends the moment they arrived?

One obvious advantage is that it will decrease the friction of trying something new. That will make it easier to launch dramatically novel things. The problem with dramatic innovations is that users often don't understand what you've made till they try it. Now you'll just be able to show them.

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