SocialMedia Blog

Israeli blogger Orli Yankul got the honor of being one of the first sites to install Google Friend Connect (post). Google Friend Connect is Google’s answer to Facebook Connect, which both let websites integrate social networking features that leverage social network’s pool of users. ReadWriteWeb has some more details about it.

This is an important event for developers and advertisers because it points to the future of social platforms outside of networks like MySpace and Facebook. In the future applications will be integrated on any website that wants them. It all adds up to more distribution.

Orli has implemented the membership widget, which lets users sign up for her site. Users can sign up using Google, Yahoo, AIM, and OpenID. When signing up, you don’t have to provide your real ID, but can instead create a site specific alias. Once signed up, you’ll be able to interact with other apps on the site and share site content with other friends on your social network.

Applications in the wild, like this, will change the types of apps developers will create. Utility apps will experience a boost as web masters seek to manage their communities, as well as media applications.

I suggest you try it out.

Last night I was able to stop by the latest Google Campfire around Friend Connect. Despite everyone knowing the news, there was a great showing of bloggers and companies (Joyent, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Hi5) there to see a demo of Friend Connect.

Friend Connect is a collection of standards meant to make low traffic sites more social by harnessing existing social networking user bases. Google’s set of widgets let web developers quickly drop in code for widgets like sign-ups, comments, or really any other application on Open Social. Mussie Shore, a Google Product Manager, showed off what Google cooked up:

The system borrows bits and pieces I’ve seen already. The user login features were distinctly MyBlogLog, although now they supported all OpenID providers. The commenting widgets reminded me of JS-Kit, but now had identities attached to them. They both make a lot more sense together. All in all, if this was a stand alone startup, I’d be enthusiastic. However, it’s Google.

The series of data portability announcements from MySpace, Facebook, and Google are no accident. While Facebook, with its large, robust, base of user accounts has a head start in bringing its network to some of the largest sites on the internet. Google, on the other hand, took a strategy of going after the “long tail” of websites out there. Their “cut-n-paste” social networking solution is designed for even the most inexperienced webmasters, like that of Ingird Michaelson’s fan page.

Given this strategy, the uptake is likely to be slow. Facebook is mainly concerned with integrating into around 100 websites, whereas Google has to reach orders of magnitude more webmasters in order to have the same user base. Google will likely push the value added not only by Friend Connect, but also the value added by its growing library of applications. iLike has a compelling music widget, and Google Friend Connect is the only way you can get it.

Justin Smith has more notes on the speech.