Google is working hard on a simple plug-in social networking solution for smaller sites. This looks really promising. Basically you can use the login features of the bigger social sites and have your readers contribute and add friends with the help of sites like FaceBook.com, Yahoo.com, Orkut.com and other sites that support OpenSocial standard.
This is all done with small code snippets, much like AdSense, that you generate easily without any programming.
The end result should help in attracting more visitors and added social features that visitors are expecting.
The idea is explained very well in this Google Friend Connect video:
From Google Friend Connect:
Everyone wins in a friend connected web:
- You, the site owner – Google Friend Connect gives you a snippet of code that, when put into your site, will equip the site with social features, including the ability to run third-party social applications. Moreover, it enables your visitors to log in with existing credentials, see who among their friends is already registered at that site. It also gives them one-click access to invite friends from their existing friends lists on other sites, such as Facebook or orkut.
- Your site’s visitors – Visitors no longer need to create a new account or develop yet another friends list just to use the social applications on your site. We create the infrastructure that allows one login to be used across multiple sites and the ability to reuse existing friend relationships that the visitor has already established elsewhere.
- OpenSocial developers – With Google Friend Connect, any website on the web can become an OpenSocial container. Their social applications can now run on social networking sites and anywhere else on the web that uses Google Friend Connect. By placing these applications on sites where users already visit, these application will be seen and used by more users more often.
- Social networks – With Google Friend Connect, social networks thrive as hubs of activity while giving their users more opportunities to bring their friend relationships to other websites while simultaneously bringing their friends and activities from outside the social network back in — with people having the ability to publish their activities across the web into the activity streams of their social networks.
To read more about this development or take part in testing it you can visit: