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Google introduced a Web site tool called Friend Connect that promises to extend the reach of social networks such as Facebook to any site that wants to use their tools. Those sites that decide to use Friend Connect can give visitors a much richer Web experience allowing even the smallest of Web sites the ability to leverage the enormous popularity of social networks.
Google says its approach will be easier to use for Web site owners to implement. The code is available from http://www.google.com/friendconnect.
How Friend Connect Works
The way it works is any site that wants to can add Friend Connect functionality to their site can simply by adding a bit of HTML code to their site. The Friend Connect feature on a site acts as a small peephole on a Web page allowing content from a preselected social network (including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and others)to be viewed within the predefined window.
In this way, Friend Connect pulls information in from existing networks, almost like how it’s possible to embed YouTube videos on your site with limited functionality. Similarly Friend Connect allows Web site visitors to “see, invite, and interact with new friends, or? with existing friends from social sites on the Web,” as Google put it.
You can see an example of how Google Friend Connect works by taking a look at the front page of the GFCdirectory, where we have embedded a Friend Connect window into the site. People who visit the site can connect with their friends without having to leave the site. Visitors will be able to see comments by friends from their social networks, add items to their profiles, see what people are doing, and enjoy other features applications .
For users, Friend Connect-enabled sites can thankfully sidestep having to create an account for yet another social network. Basically, let’s say you visit a certain site all the time and you want to sign up as a member. If the site adds Friend Connect code for Facebook, you’ll be able to sign up as a member using your Facebook login and see which of your Facebook friends are members of the site too.
I’d guess that the ultimate goal for Friend Connect or any similar data portability service would be to share information between social networking platforms and also to allow smaller site owners to customize incoming data from existing social networks, letting it mingle alongside content created on the independent site.
We have also heard that soon websites that use Friend Connect will have a new option – add Adsense-like advertising within the Friend Connect and Open Social widgets that they’ve added to their websites. Publishers will get a percentage of the revenue generated from the advertising.
