Google Friend Connect - Social Media Tool
Category: Social Media News
Tags: API, Facebook, friend connect, google, Google Talk, hi5, Orkut, Plaxo
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Without requiring coding experience, Google Friend Connect gives site owners a way to attract and engage more people by giving visitors a way to connect with friends on their websites.
- Drive traffic: people who discover interesting sites can bring their friends with them, and can opt-in to publish their activities on those sites back into their social network, attracting even more visitors.
- Increase engagement: access to friends and OpenSocial applications provides more interesting content and richer social experiences.
- Less work: any site can have social components without hiring a programming team or becoming a social network.
We expect new development and to get your first orientation, catch the preview video below.
This story is starting to gain more attention in the news as writers discuss the implications with other social media website owners.
As of this post there were 419 related news articles for the 24 hour news release period.
The top news stories currently for Google’s announcement are:
Telecom Paper (subscription), Netherlands
Google previews Google Friend Connect, a service that helps website owners provide social networking features for visitors. The application enables any …
New York Times, United States
On Monday, Google introduced its take on the same phenomenon, Google Friend Connect. Google puts two spins on this concept. First, its program is designed …
InformationWeek, NY
By Thomas Claburn Google on Monday announced a preview release of Google Friend Connect, a way for Web publishers to add social features to sites without …
PC World
In one example of how Google Friend Connect will work the artist Ingrid Michaelson on her Web site will embed a Friend Connect window into her site which …
Bizjournals.com, NC
Google Inc. whose newly announced product, Friend Connect, was developed by a local engineering team - is launching that service tomorrow, officials said. …
ZDNet UK, UK
Demonstrations of Google’s Friend Connect service seemed to be generally well received on Monday night during the company’s third Campfire One event at its …
Google Blogoscoped
Google released Friend Connect, a service for webmasters to add such gadgets as comments, reviews, or contact lists to their site. …
Times Online, UK
Google Friend Connect provides participating sites with plug-in applications to enable the exchange of messages, photographs, music, video and games. …
Scenta.co.uk, UK
Google is due to announce a preview release of Google Friend Connect, a service they say will help website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the …
Shiny Shiny, UK
Google has just launched Google Friend Connect. This is a new service that allows non-social networking sites to embed social networking capabilities …
Bigmouthmedia News, UK
During a conference call at Google’s California headquarters, David Glazer, Google’s director of engineering told reporters: “Google Friend Connect is about …
eFluxMedia
“Google Friend Connect is about helping the ‘long tail’ of sites become more social,” said David Glazer, director of engineering at Google. …News Source: May 13, 2008 - “Google Friend Connect” via Google News
In addition to the news coverage, there are now about 123,000 web pages with the term “Google Friend Connect” which means we should expect to see a strong and continuous increase of Friend Connect widget coverage in the coming weeks.
And just what does this news mean for social media users and website owners? Erick SconFeld with TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/12/google-confirms-friend-connect/) spoke with a Google engeneering director who stated that, “you will be able to sign in under your Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, Orkut, or Plaxo IDs and then authorize the site to go out and retrieve your friend’s list from that network. Any of those friends who also happen to be members of the site you are on will then show up and you can interact with them.”
Note the need for some subtle styling on the Friend Connect widget but as for instant social community for your website this might just be the fastest path.
The Official Google News Press Release: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/20080512_friend_connect.html
We are optimistic about this open social contribution and it may mean that existing social networks need to bring a different social networking twist to the table once social software tools help bridge the connections and it’s not completely necessary to visit the core social media networking site.
We’ll keep and eye on the progress!
May 15th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
“As Friend Connect supposedly shares user data in a way that circumvents total disclosure to all users involved, Facebook has stated that Friend Connect does not comply with its standards for collecting user data and redistributing it across the web. The result? Friend Connect’s access to Facebook has been suspended.”
http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/facebook-blocks-friend-connec/