An inversion has been taking place with sites like FaceBook and Twitter and the sites that reference them, perhaps inspired by the relative success of Disqus and Friendfeed – for instance, I have been using my gmail id more for authentication purposes than to check my email for a while, but the same is becoming true for FaceBook Connect, and particularly Twitter.

This goes beyond using a third party Twitter client – more and more I go through sites that authenticate me using my Twitter credentials, then feed my content back into that stream, but are not FriendFeed – these are branded sites. Twitter has become a point of authentication, and to a lesser extent, so has FaceBook. This should allow brands, artists and organisations to leverage these streams without relying or tying down with them.

In a similar vein to the notion that bands and brands just want a place to call their own, I recently wrote about an idea for commercial and non-commercial branding that involves separating the concerns of content from the concerns of brand. The idea is still pretty nascent, but basically boils down to this: online branding needs to evolve into a secure namespace for identity. [ http://is.gd/5OAkJ ]

Not sure exactly where this idea is going, but I feel it is important, and I’d of course appreciate any comments. Cheers :)