Life & Wisdom Quote by Erik Qualman

“Web without walls” is the kind of liberation slogan that only makes sense if you don’t look too closely at who gets to build the walls. Qualman is selling a frictionless internet: fewer logins, fewer profiles, less tedious identity paperwork. On its face, Facebook Connect is convenience-as-progress, a shortcut that feels like empowerment because it removes small annoyances users hate and developers resent.

The subtext is that identity is the new infrastructure. Facebook isn’t just offering a tool; it’s proposing itself as the default passport office for the web. When you can comment, rate, and participate everywhere through a single account, you’re not merely avoiding sign-up forms. You’re standardizing your digital self through one company’s rules, data model, and incentives. “Without walls” quietly becomes “with one gate.”

Context matters here: this line sits in the early-2010s optimism about social platforms as connective tissue for the internet. Facebook Connect arrived when the web was sprawling, fragmented, and full of dead accounts and forgotten passwords. The pitch to publishers and startups was irresistible: lower barriers to engagement, higher conversion, better personalization. The pitch to users was emotional: stop being a stranger every time you land somewhere new.

But the rhetorical magic is how it reframes consolidation as openness. It borrows the language of freedom to describe a system that centralizes identity, attention, and behavioral data. The “new profile” you don’t create doesn’t disappear; it’s absorbed. The wall doesn’t vanish. It relocates.