14 DAY TRIAL // A battle is brewing between Google and Facebook over online identity. Both companies offer tools which enable users to log into various sites using their existing credentials, either with Facebook Connect or through Google Friend Connect. Facebook has been winning over the big sites, but Google has more sway with those looking for a more open approach. This approach enabled Google to work with CMS developers to implement Friend Connect features in Drupal and Joomla. Users of the popular open source CMS platforms can now integrate the community features provided by Friend Connect with their sites with very little effort.
"I'm happy to announce that Google Friend Connect features are now also available for Drupal and Joomla. Now that Friend Connect is integrated with these popular open source CMS platforms, site owners can make registration easier for users and offer them a set of social features -- all without writing a single line of code. Even site owners without programming experience can add these plugins," Mauro Gonzalez of Globant wrote on the Google Social Web blog.
Both CMS platforms have a pretty complete implementation, taking full advantage of Friend Connect features like Interest Polls, AdSense, Newsletter Subscriptions, Featured Content and also widgets like Members, Comments, Recommendations, Activities, Reviews and the Social Bar. Admins can implement any of the features they want and place the widgets on their sites using the integrated interface in both platforms and also moderate comments if they choose to add that functionality as well.
With Friend Connect, users can now create an account on any site using Drupal or Joomla automatically based on their existing Google, Twitter, Yahoo or any other OpenID account. The Twitter integration was added about a month ago and it is already proving quite popular judging by the number of people with Twitter accounts that show up on sites using Friend Connect. The tool also got a major update recently, adding several new, mostly social features.