Google Friend Connect 'widgetises' social networks

Google has unveiled a preview of Friend Connect, a way to add social features to a Web site without programming.

David Glazer, director of engineering at Google, described Friend Connect, which was inaccessible today, as plumbing for the rest of the Web.

"The Web is getting better by getting more social. We've baked social features into the infrastructure of the Web, and it is not tied to any particular site," Glazer said. "Users can interact with any of their friends anywhere they go on Web, and with any app."

In response to whether Friend Connect was a response to Facebook Connect and MySpace.com's Data Availability, Glazer said, "People will speculate a lot in that direction. We didn't create this code in the three days [since Facebook and MySpace made their announcements]."

Unlike Facebook and MySpace, Google lacks a dominant, centralised social-networking hub. Friend Connect works the edges of the Internet, applying an open and distributed approach, and bringing a social dimension to the 99-plus percent of sites that aren't socially enabled.

Guacamole is a sample site created by Google for demonstrating Friend Connect features. (Credit: Google)

"The distributed model has worked well for the Web. That is what the Web does — many points of light loosely coupled and massively distributed, allowing users to connect to pages of information," Glazer said. "Now it is working to connect people to other people."

Friend Connect-compliant sites will be able to view, invite, and interact with newfound friends, or with existing friends, from established social-networking sites, including Facebook, Google Talk, Hi5, Orkut, and Plaxo via secure authorisation application-programming interfaces.

Currently only a few sample sites, including Google's Guacamole site, are available to end users. "We are looking to get feedback from Web site owners about what kinds of sites and apps they want," Glazer said. Ingrid Michaelson, an independent musician, integrates iLike's OpenSocial application with Friend Connect to connect friends without having to leave the site.

John McCrea, vice president of marketing at Plaxo, said Google's Friend Connect is "flipping the model" from walled gardens [such as Facebook] to a more open social Web.