Facebook Connect Boosts Gawker's New User Sign-Ups, Comments

Three weeks after it launched, about 100,000 people have signed up for Facebook Connect, the social network's service that allows members to use their accounts on participating third-party sites across the Internet.

The numbers are according to AllFacebook.

100,000 users is not much -- about .07% of Facebook's 140 million active users.

The main hold-up? Large Web publishers Hulu, Digg and Twitter, which say they plan to implement Facebook Connect, haven't yet.

For now, the largest publisher on the authentication service is TV-on-the-Web video site Joost.com, which has 13,000 users signed-up through Facebook Connect.

Next, there's the Gawker Media blog network, with six sites in the top 25 and some 9,000 Facebook Connect-using members. IAC video-sharing site Vimeo has 6,000.

If Facebook is going to build an ad network on the back of Facebook Connect and finally earn revenues to justify a $15 billion (or even a $4 billion) valuation -- as everyone assumes is the company's plan -- it needs to quickly put the 100,000 user milestone in the rear mirror.

We believe it will.

Gawker Media tells us that since implementing Facebook Connect, user registrations are up 45% week over the week. Comments are up 16%.

It's hard to imagine that after hearing those kinds of numbers, publishers won't scramble to hook up their sites to Facebook's 140 million active users as fast as possilble.