BlogHer - Should you add Google Friend Connect to your blog? - Comments

oh no, another one!

washwords — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:45:14 -0500

washy || http://washwords.wordpress.com || washwords.dc@gmail.com

Hi there.. interesting post and new development. I find I am sooo overwhelmed by all the media options / social networking sites out there. eek.

I probably WON'T add this to my blog, for a few reasons, namely

1) While I loved a lot about blogging through google (blogger), when you get advanced and use their draft blogger system and have ANY issue, whether your fault or theirs, you can easily get blogged out for life! my site went "down" and while you are given an error code there's NO person to send said code to, or easy way to find help. That's why I switched to wordpress, which I like MUCH better, except

2) that certain super cool features (like google analytics) and I'm betting this new "friend" thingy don't work on wordpress. Similarly I find google reader about the most cumbersome tricky thing to read regularly and follow. I get sooo overwhelmed by it and it seems like it could/should be easy (what happened to bulletin board threads? that worked great!) .

3) I like to be (relatively) anonymous on my blog, so I don't want to confuse this with my "real" gmail account which is waaaay too easy to do on google.

Don't get me wrong. I love google for lots of things and I HEAR google analytics is great. For me right now though, it's a non-entity.

P.S. Facebook is adding something this week that will let you link your "friends" from other sites (like twitter, myspace, etc etc.) - eek...

washy || http://washwords.wordpress.com || washwords.dc@gmail.com

If you're more interested

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:05:44 -0500

in contributing good content than in fame and fortune, then adding social networking features to a site might not be anything that would help you with your mission. Good point.

http://www.webteacher.ws/ http://first50.wordpress.com/

I'm a slow adopter

Vered — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:55:12 -0500

So I won't pass any judgment on this, but will wait and see what others are doing, then act accordingly.

It sometimes seems to me that more time is spent on figuring out how to
make money from interaction on line, than on discovering better ways
to interact!

I completely agree. In blogs too, the issue of posting valuable content vs. blogging "for fame and fortune", as Jenn so eloquently put it, is giving me a headache and a split blogging personality.

Vered DeLeeuw
www.momgrind.com

Thanks for pointing out the connection

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:09:07 -0500

between the "free" services and content we get that are powered by ad money. You know, we've been getting free TV and free radio that way for so long, we sometimes forget that the cost of it has to come from somewhere.

http://www.webteacher.ws/ http://first50.wordpress.com/

No such thing as a free lunch...

mashadutoit — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:49:21 -0500

Thanks for this post!

I've been following that conversation on Myspace and Facebook - I cant remember if I got this link from you! I've just discovered your blog posts on technology, always fascinating.

This is an interesting new development. It sometimes seems to me that more time is spent on figuring out how to make money from interaction on lline, than on discovering better ways to interact!

Should you add Google Friend Connect to your blog?

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:19:15 -0500

Yesterday Google announced a new social network tool called Friend Connect. Google suggests that every blog owner in her right mind will want to add Friend Connect to her blog. What is Friend Connect, and do you want to use it on your blog?

Here's Google's PR about Friend Connect:

With Google Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming -- picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Musician Ingrid Michaelson got her site ready in advance of the announcement, and the Google press release sent people there for an example of how it works.

To illustrate, independent musician Ingrid Michaelson has added music features from iLike with Google Friend Connect and is now able to run the iLike OpenSocial application on her official website. As a result, fans who visit Ingrid's site can connect with their friends without having to leave the site. Visitors will be able to see comments by friends from their social networks, add music to their profiles, see who is attending concerts, and enjoy other features of the iLike application, all at Ingrid's website. With Google Friend Connect, people will be able to enjoy their favorite features with their friends on any website across the web.

If you click the small sign in link at the top of Ingrid Michaelson's home page, you sign in to Friend Connect using a Google ID or an other Open ID.

For the user, it's like taking all your friends from Facebook, MySpace and other social networks with you whereever you go, provided the site you visit is using Friend Connect.

For the blog owner, you get more traffic and increase the engagement of your visitors with almost no effort on your part. The question is, do you want to do that with your site?

Charlene Li, in her Forrester blog Groundwell, comments in Google Friend Connect -- making open social easy,

One question I'm hearing is why Friend Connect is being announced now, especially on the heels of MySpace and Facebook announcements last week. Google is tapping into the "all things social" heat of the moment, but it's adding a different perspective -- not as a data source and social network "owner" but as an enabler. It's played this role well in the past with search and mapping APIs but make no mistake -- Google wants to spread its tentacles into the social Web.

The biggest buzz right now about social networks is not about them becoming more open, but about how they can't make money. I expect that at some point in the future, participating sites will have the option of enabling monetization engines via AdSense that tap into the deep profile and user data flowing through Friend Connect -- all done, presumably, with clear user approval and transparency.

Another blogger mentioned AdSense and how Google plans to use it. At Startup Chatter, Donna Bogatin talked about what this new service from Google is going to do to Ning in her post Google Friend Connect Rains on Ning $500 million Social Network Parade.

The Google FREE call to social network action, for each and every Website in the world:

"Easily insert social features to make any app, any site, any friends, a reality…Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social, and now they can be: Any site can have social components without hiring a programming team or becoming a social network."

WHY is Google being so benevolently free with its latest “free” service?

David Glazer, Google: "When more people use the Web, more people see the ads that Google runs on Web sites."

Laurel Papworth agrees with Donna Bogatin. She said on Twitter (where she's SilkCharm) "I think Google Friend Connect just blew Ning out of the water - if not Facebook? Any app, any site, any friends."

I don't see the connection mentioned on Startup Chatter. Ning provides you with a complete social network site. This is different from giving you a way to add some social networking among friends to an existing site that isn't necessarily already a social network. I'm not sure Google is really raining on Ning's parade. Maybe they are. What do you think?

Corvida, at Read Write Web, speculated on the rumors about Friend Connect a couple of days before Google opened up the site in Will Google Join the Crowd With A "Friend Connect" Platform? She commented on some of the possible restrictions.

Don't get your hopes up just yet. The most interesting part of this story is that it seems Google will be keeping a tighter reign on its data compared to the Facebook Connect and Data Availability platforms. Where Myspace and Facebook will be using their APIs to distribute data, Google will be requiring third parties to show data directly from Google's servers in an iframe. While third parties will be able to make the connection, it will unfortunately have to be on Google's terms.

If this is starting to sound like something you want to do, you must go to Friend Connect and get signed up. But you won't be able to start your own social networking quite yet. According to Janet Meiners of Marketing Pilgrim in Google Connect Makes Sites More Social,

Google Friend Connect is in a preview release and will start with a group of sites that Google has picked.

As for me, I see no reason to add Friend Connect to any of my sites. But I'm not active on Facebook, which may be why I'm not interested. If you want to have a conversation with me on my blog, the comments are available. And providing you with a way to connect to your friends on my sites doesn't seem of much benefit either. I may eat my words later after we've seen Friend Connect in action for a while. I've had to do that before. So if it comes to the word eating stage, you'll be the first to know.

More Resources:
-CNET's Google brings Friend Connect to the masses
-Facebook Connect announcement