Facebook announced a new tool that will let users sign into apps and websites without sharing their personal information.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's casually dressed CEO, announced the new "Anonymous Login" feature on Wednesday at the F8 developer conference in San Francisco.
Right now, Facebook is the default login for scores of websites and apps. The problem is that users don't always love sharing their personal information when signing up for a totally unrelated service.
In the future, users will have the option to log in to other services through Facebook anonymously. The company also unveiled "Line by Line Control," which will allow people to choose what kind of information -- including birthdays, emails and friend lists -- they want to share when logging in.
"People tell us they’re sometimes worried about sharing information with apps and want more choice and control over what personal information apps receive," the company wrote in a blog post. "Today’s announcements put power and control squarely in people’s hands."
The company also announced a new mobile ad product called the "Facebook Audience Network." It will let developers insert ads from Facebook's more than 1 million advertisers into their own apps and then split the revenue.
The move could help Facebook compete with other mobile ad networks like Google's AdMob.
Facebook said that it's testing Anonymous Login with a few developers now and then making it widely available to all developers "in the coming months."
