It was just a matter of time before Google started to leverage the massive base of Google accounts to connect everyone together. As usual, this new Google project is ambitious - instead of creating a new social network as a destination site, the new Friend Connect service takes the network to where the people already are - on blogs and websites.
Friend Connect (www.google.com/friendconnect) comes in the form of a sidebar for websites and blogs that has a powerful viral invitation tool for getting people to join and become part of a community that centres around the content of the site. Website creators and bloggers can invite new community members from a list of Gmail contacts or share the site inside other social networks such as Facebook, MySpace etc.
The genius of it is its simplicity - much like the paradigm-shift brought about by Google's Adsense - Friend Connect explodes the notion of social networking completely and enables any website to be a component of a global social network.
How does it work? Website creators log in to FriendConnect using their Gmail accounts, download some code and put it on the site. Once this is done, there are several gadgets that can be embedded into the site to enhance the community aspect once people have joined your network:
- a wall gadget so people can post videos, comments and other bits of social lint onto your site;
- a review gadget so people can discuss how cool or lame you are depending on their mood, and,
- most importantly, an OpenSocial gadget that allows you to embed OpenSocial applications inside your site.
The scale of it is grand, like the Israelites toppling the walls of Jericho with their trumpets, or the rumble of elephants and infantry descending upon the Rhône.
Forget the social network as a walled garden, forget social networks as destination sites - FriendConnect turns the whole web into a social network.
• Adapted from original blog post published on 7 December 2008.
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