Technology, Culture, Commentary on the Internet Revolution

Google Friend Connect Plugs Sites into Social Networks

by Mike Abundo on May 13th, 2008

Mere days after the announcements of MySpace Data Availability and Facebook Connect, Google comes out with a lighter but wider social network data portability initiative. Last night at the Googleplex saw the announcement of Google Friend Connect, a set of widgets that lets any site plug itself into its readers’ social graphs on multiple social networks.

Preview partners include Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, and (surprisingly) Facebook. Site readers can sign in through Google, Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID (unsurprisingly, not Microsoft). Expect other Google OpenSocial networks to get in on the action in the coming weeks. Friend Connect also enables any site to become an OpenSocial app container, using social graph data from participating OpenSocial networks.

Notoriously-closed Facebook probably scrambled for Friend Connect in hasty response to MySpace Data Availability. Wonder if this will turn Facebook Connect into a weekend puff of vaporware. MySpace, meanwhile, has already stated it’s willing to adopt any data portability features Google throws into OpenSocial.

Data portability on Friend Connect is two-way. Friends on various social networks can find each other on external sites, and friend activity on external sites shows up in update feeds on various social networks.

What is It Good For?

The benefits to site owners are clear. In the old days, marketing your site required maintaining multiple disparate profiles on a ridiculous number of social networks. Now all you need is Friend Connect to maintain interconnected presences on the major ones.

The benefits to social network sites are clear. Relationships on those social networks become meaningful not just on the social network sites themselves, but across the Web.

The benefits to users are clear. You can find out what all your Facebook/LinkedIn/Hi5/Orkut/whatever friends are doing not just on those sites, but across the Web.

The benefits to OpenSocial developers are clear. If you thought putting social apps on social networks was hot, imagine putting them all over the Web.

The benefits to Google are doubly clear. Not only can they accumulate mountains of data about how your entire social graph moves across the Web, they also get to lock Microsoft out of the social. Ballmer will need another chair.

One Small Step for Throwing Sheep

Right now, site integration is only widget-deep — all the interaction happens in IFrames. Friend Connect does not currently provide APIs for sites to interact directly with social networks. A lot of content management systems come with their own community features, from simple linear comments to full-blown MySpace clones; wish Google would provide ways for those features to directly plug into Friend Connect. I’d hate to have two comment forms on my blog — one for the blog, and one for Friend Connect. This is just a preview release, so I’m not complaining yet.

Despite the shallow integration in its first iteration, Friend Connect is a step in the right direction. We’re all sick of watching social networks greedily act as if they own our social graphs. A giant like Google has the muscle to make them all play nice with each other and the rest of the Web. Let’s see how they use that muscle.

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POSTED IN: AOL, Google, Social Networking, Yahoo