Mike Schroepfer at Facebook has blogged the reasoning behind the social network becoming a member of the OpenID Foundation, a move that’s surprised some because, as Adam Ostrow at Mashable points out, until now, Facebook Connect, the company’s identity platform for third-party websites, has so far looked like more of a competitor to OpenID than an ally.

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb blogs five reasons why he’s optimistic about the news, incidentally providing the best comparative analogy for the authentication systems I’ve yet seen:

“The two systems of logging in to distributed websites, OpenID and Facebook Connect, have been characterized as rivals – OpenID being the high-minded but socially awkward one who doesn’t get invited to parties despite being a really good person and Facebook Connect being the rich preppy popular kid from the 80′s movie who’s a bully but is good at sports.Now they’ve joined forces, on some level. Cynics immediately said it would make no difference, that their cynicism remained unchanged, or that Facebook was likely to “pull a Microsoft” and try to destroy OpenID. We disagree. We think this is good news.”

Ostrow still has doubts:

“The Facebook Connect experience is simply better than that offered by OpenID, and from a competitive standpoint, Facebook has an opportunity to be the standard identity provider for other websites. While goodwill can created by joining the OpenID Foundation and sharing what the industry likes to call “best practices,” at this point, Facebook actually implementing OpenID would be a far bigger boon to OpenID than it would be to Facebook, and hence, I don’t see it happening any time soon.”

Elsewhere on the web:

Peter Newcomb has put together a top 10 list for paidContent’s EconMusic Conference, charting the evolution of digital distribution and promotion models in the music industry.

The New York Times brings us another stellar example of an interactive infographic, based on a vox pop of American citizens’ hopes for the Obama administration.

Jeremiah Owyang gives his views on Google Latitude in this eWeek article.