Cartoon: Why Can't We Be Friends?
This week saw Facebook Connect open its doors to the broader world, on the same day that Google Friend Connect launched its public beta. This was the kind of day that headline writers dream of ("'Friend-ly rivals'! Or maybe 'With friends like these'! Or...").
But it gave me that same sinking feeling that my parents probably had when they went VCR shopping for the first time and the salesperson said, "So - Beta or VHS?"
Now, some clever-pants developer has probably already created some kind of intricate way of melding the two... one that I hope can withstand the inevitable tweaks and upgrades each service will endure over time. With any luck, we may even soon be able to switch social networks and take our social graphs with us when we go. (And with that, I break a sworn oath never to use the term "social graph".)
Just so long as it doesn't leave our blogs and web apps like those parties where you have two circles of friends eying each other warily from across the buffet table. Can we all get along?
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Google is the best
I think FaceBook will win in this battle.
I am already using Google Freind connect on my site ,it is so easy to add to blog or website which is different in case of Facebook which is very difficult to add.
Well, I'm using Google Friend Connect for http://us.tractorfan.eu, but I'm having trouble getting people to become a member, because, well, there's *nothing* you can do to promote it....
facebook connect is more useful as compare to Google friend connect
not everything made by google is not gr8 as their search technology
I think Facebook got it right this time and wins this battle hands down, mainly because their framework allows deep linking to our site. See my full discussion here: http://cli.gs/7zMPz4
Rob,
We wrote about this last week at http://traackr.com/blog/?p=61
Unlike standards for video tapes or even DVDs building bridges between OpenID and Facebook Connect should cause too much of a headache to many crafty developers.
So even if we end up with 2 standards, it will already me a thousand times better than the mess we're currently in with limited to no standardization.