Facebook is now testing a new feature that will enable users to log in anonymously from mobile apps.
This plan was unveiled by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his keynote speech at the F8 developers' conference, which took place on April 30 in San Francisco. The anonymous login feature goes somewhat against the company's policy of transparency, requiring their network of about 1.28 billion active users to always use their real names.
However, Zuckerberg explained that the new feature will help Facebook users who are not too comfortable with sharing their personal data when testing for mobile apps.
When users logged in anonymously during the test, Facebook sent some unique identification to the app's publishers.
"This is going to let you try apps without fear," Zuckerberg told SFGate. "And if you want, you can always sign in with your real identity."
Recently, Facebook allowed its users to pick which pieces of personal information they want to share, such as favorite movies, their phone number, or song lists. Last year, the company's stats showed that the social networking site's logins were used to access mobile apps about 10 billion times.
The anonymous login feature is still in its testing and development phase. Facebook is reportedly working with their developers to get it ready within the next months. Most of its features are still undecided, including enabling the user to switch from anonymous to public profile simultaneously, as users can with Google Incognito and the regular browser.
"We'll have to wait and see what it turns into, but essentially it's going to mean users can log in to apps and not have to reveal their identity," Brian Blau of Gartner Research told SFGate. "That's pretty interesting; because it's the first time they've really done anything with anonymity."
