Google Brings Twitter to Friend Connect
Google Friend Connect is a way for web site owners to bring social features like comments or media sharing to any site on the Internet. Today, Google announced that it is also adding support for Twitter to Friend Connect. Now, when you join a 'Friend Connected' site, you get the option to connect your Twitter and Google accounts. This allows you to discover all your Twitter friends who are also members of this site.
To add your Twitter friends, simply go to your Google Profile after joining a site and click on "Add/Remove." You can also choose to use your Twitter profile and avatar as your main profile for Friend Connect. Besides adding your Twitter friends, you can also link your Plaxo and Orkut accounts to Friend Connect.
Sadly, it doesn't look like Google implemented any advanced authentication mechanisms like OAuth for the Twitter integration (Update: apparently this is Twitter's own fault for not supporting OAuth yet, though they promise to enable this feature in the next major release).
As Biz Stone points out on the Twitter blog, this might indeed become an interesting way to find your Twitter friends on other sites. For now, however, Friend Connect is not implemented widely enough for it to have any real effect yet.
Friend Connect vs. Facebook Connect
Google is clearly locked in a battle with Facebook Connect, and thanks to this Twitter integration, Friend Connect now feels a bit more like Facebook Connect, as your actual friends are shown separately from the other members of the site.
This Twitter integration will surely sway a few site owners to implement Friend Connect over Facebook Connect, but it will surely take a month or two before we can see which service is taking the lead.
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I tested on my blog works fine. I don't know If I like it tho.
Wrote the article my self about it about 1.5hr ago.
I predict the running will be neck and neck in the next year. Before Google can take the lead there will have to be some innovation in the open source gadgets that are on the market. One drawback to Facebook Connect is that it is a closed system and if you don't use Facebook for networking it just doesn't make sense to have it on your site. I see these two services each filling niches and I'd like to see them both succeed in order maintain a competitive playing field.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but both services seem entirely too one-way to ultimately come out on top in their current form.
So far, Twitter wins vs. Facebook Connect or Google Friend Connect. It wins by letting all of it's information out, as well as letting information back in.
Right now, rather than having unified notions of "status" and "comment" and "post" or "story", as well as "friend" (and other relationship), we have fragmented services that duplicate those functionalities in isolated pockets of our online lives.
Facebook Connect kind of pulls other websites into Facebook, but because it is one-way, it isn't a real fix. We need full two-way communications between these kinds of services to pull the islands together into a cohesive experience for users.
Then each service that has a means to post or display, for example, status, becomes a kind of front end to the larger connected service. I can choose the one(s) that best suit my needs and personality at the time.
While the monitization is most likely to happen at the front end (though there is certainly value in the backend databases!), this connection will grow the pie for everyone and fair competition on the merits (rather than simple entrenchment) will decide who the biggest winners are.
Google will totally take over Facebook on this one.
I mean Google is becoming infrastructure, Facebook is just offering an add-on.
Google is the king of simplicity. Try to set up Facebook connect and you'll see what I mean.
But!
In order to make sure the service takes off, Google should:
1) Ensure I have a way of exporting / importing data (comments at least), as well as provide easy way to integrate with already existing login systems on the site.
2) Support more social networks – MySpace is a must, but I'm also thinking about FlickR and actually YouTube.
Hail to the Thieves
Facebook Connect, Google Open Social, and twitter the closed source content trap are all a slap in the face to the Open Principals of the internet.
Any developer and proponent of a truly Open web must take an active roll in pushing for the success of Laconica and OpenID and should not help to extend any closed source application.
Today we have no less than 3 closed source companies in a race to become the "Standard" for holding our Identity and therefore having access to the content that we read and creates. These companies will leverage our content to create revenue; giving nothing back to the content owners or to the community.
Why do developers especially Open Source developers continue to build and extend applications for closed source companies that under mind open source standards and ideals ?
Why do users continue to view giving control of their identity and content to these companies as a win, when in fact the win is clearly on the side of the company that you have allowed to take control of your identity and to generate value and revenue from your content. In return for our compliance we do not even have a right to take our identity and our content where we want.
Open Source developers, please do not write any code to extend the propitiatory services of closed source applications . They are not your "Friend" When you write code for these companies you undermine the integrity of the Open Web.