14 DAY TRIAL // Google Friend Connect has become available in a beta version to any webmaster that is looking for additional “dash of social” to his or her site. According to a post that has been recently published on the official Google Blog, the service is meant to allow webmasters to add social features to their sites, by simply copying a few snippets of code, without the hassle of advance coding or the need of technical knowledge.
It's a common fact that people want to socialize on the Internet, so Friend Connect offers them the possibility to simply sign in, create customized profile, then look for other individuals who share the same interests. Moreover, people don't have to go through the trouble of setting up a new account, as the service allows them to sign in using the same username and password they already have on Google, Yahoo, AOL, or OpenID. At the same time, users can either build a new profile or import one they have already established on other social networks such as Plaxo and orkut.
According to the post on the blog, Friend Connect has been initially launched as a preview in May, and the developing team has been working closely with website owners and social networks, as well as with application developers, in an effort to increase the speed of the service and its scalability, in addition to making it easier to use and more customizable. Furthermore, users can now benefit from expanded features, including a wider range of embedded profiles and more ways of sharing content, for instance the inclusion of YouTube movies in their comments.
“Friend Connect's goal is to facilitate an open social web. Using open standards like OpenID and OAuth, Friend Connect makes it simple for people to instantly interact with one another on the sites that they already love to visit. Additionally, websites that use Friend Connect become OpenSocial containers, capable of running applications created by the OpenSocial developer community.”
The developers are expecting to see in the near future that more webmasters have added Friend Connect to their sites, thus encouraging more user interaction around the Web. The video below will help you draw a better picture of what Friend Connect is all about. More information on this service is available here.