Prominent Israeli tech blogger Orli Yakuel has just installed the first Google Friend Connect widget we've seen yet in the wild. The service lets visitors to a website with Friend Connect enabled see the friends of theirs from other social networks who are also members of that website's community. It's like a cross network MyBlogLog, but hopefully even cooler.
We were highly critical of Friend Connect when it was originally unveiled, but it's exciting none the less to see the thing go live. The program still requires publishers to request access, but the slow roll out to approved publishers appears to have begun.
So far we've seen a few notable details emerge. The platform is still in its formative stages, publishing to the newsfeeds of other social networks is still only enabled for the Orkut sandbox. That will be an important part of what Friend Connect offers.
The service still says "connect with your Facebook friends!" despite the high-profile shut down of access by Facebook. The settings interface says "blocked by Facebook."
There's limited functionality that we've seen so far, but Yakuel has implemented a messaging widget. In that widget users have the option to view all messages left on her site or just the messages left by their friends.
We've been critical of Google's approach to the connections, which goes on in an iFrame and does not appear to allow programmatic access to social graph or other data on the part of the publisher. Privacy issues are a big concern, but we hope that all of these social/data portability type initiatives will place a premium on enabling developer innovation as well.
We'll be watching the Go2Web2.0 blog for more details in a post later this morning.
Comments
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great find Marshall. it's the first i've seen it.
I love the blantant "Disabled by Facebook" - awesome.
Posted by: Michael Lambie | June 12, 2008 9:47 AM
So slow... Sucks a lot!
Posted by: John | June 12, 2008 9:53 AM
Hey Marshall,
Until I saw this in action I don't think I realized how transformative Friend Connect (and the competing services) really are. The widget platforms suddenly have to become social platforms as well. All I can say is wow!
Posted by: Nick O'Neill | June 12, 2008 1:13 PM
http://jrsays.com has featured FriendConnect since May 2007, linked from http://jrochelle.googlepages.com/97g-timeline-about.html
Posted by: J Do | June 12, 2008 1:44 PM
typo for Comment#4:
- May 2007
+ May 2008
Posted by: J.Do | June 12, 2008 1:46 PM
It won't get traction until facebook eventually lets them connect.
Posted by: MyBlogFans | June 12, 2008 11:38 PM
In-widget message posting? Bring on the spam!
Posted by: Eric Marcoullier | June 12, 2008 11:57 PM
Google is quietly but effectively taking over the world. The last thing I noticed is that Google docs has taken over for microsoft word for a lot of people.
Now they are trying to make their way to the top of the social networks, next..... I would guess operating system.
I live in the SF bay area and there is a shortage of all good software engineers. The reason why? They all work for google.
Posted by: Personal Trainer | June 13, 2008 11:53 PM
I can definitely see Google gaining ground with Google docs for a lot of users who don't want to fork out the duckets for Microsoft Office. I know a fair share of users myself who in fact use Google Docs currently.
Time will tell that is for sure.
Posted by: Laptop Tech | June 16, 2008 12:40 PM