Google Friend Connect
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Google Friend Connect Introduces New Ways to Make Friends, Send Newsletters and See More Highly Targeted Ads
Google just announced a number of major updates to Google Friend Connect (GFC), the company's set of tools that can bring social networking tools and widgets to any site. Today, Google is extending this functionality with a new 'Interests' section that helps a site's visitors to get to know each other, a newsletter tool and gadgets that display personalized content recommendations. Google now also allows site owners to connect this data they gather from their users with their AdSense accounts to display more highly targeted ads.
First Google Friend Connect Spotted in the Wild
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.
Google Friend Connect Tries to Strangle the Social
Later tonight Google will launch a new service called Friend Connect, aiming to "bring the social" to any page around the web. Unfortunately the service takes a bunch of open technical standards yearning to see the light of day through mass adoption and puts them in a dark little box where they will struggle to breathe.
Google could have worked with other large companies and with the creators of these standards (some are in the Data Portability Working Group that Google joined, for example) to tackle the hard questions around data exposure, integration and privacy. Instead they are pushing their Open Social standard around in an iframe. Easy is very good, but co-operation could have come up with something better than this.
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