Friend Connect - SocialTimes.com

Google's Social Push Accelerates Tomorrow With Gmail Social Stream

nickoneill — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:50:46 +0000

While Google has been strategizing ways to fend off the Facebook threat for the past couple years, the company has been accelerating efforts in recent weeks. The company began recruiting a number of social web advocates including Chris Messina, Will Norris, and most recently Joseph Smarr who previously worked for Plaxo to create a new “Social Web Team” . Tomorrow, it is expected that Google will take things one step further by launching a social stream within Gmail according to the Wall Street Journal.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

There Are Now 8 Million Google Friend Connect Communities

nickoneill — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:58:10 +0000

In an interview with Xconomy, Mussie Shore, one of the developers behind Google Friend Connect, says that “8 million communities have formed with Friend Connect”. What do those communities consist of? The same widget which shows up in the sidebar of this site. The number is massive considering that Facebook Connect is now on “tens of thousands” of websites. I’ve written about the service extensively since it first launched and as of now, it’s being hailed as a great success.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

3 Million Blogs Have Installed Google Friend Connect

nickoneill — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:22:38 +0000

Today Google has announced that their Friend Connect widget has been installed on “nearly three million blogs, with someone following a new blog every second.” That would mean that there are nearly 86,400 users following a blog every day. Today Google has also announced the integration of Google Friend Connect with Blogger. I’ve posted a video below of what that integration looks like.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Google: Good With Widgets, Not With Feeds

nickoneill — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:54:21 +0000

When Google launched their Friend Connect service publicly last week, they one-upped Facebook by providing publishers with an easy to install widget on their site for instantly creating a community. While the features weren’t robust, it made it so that anybody could instantly implement the service on their site. In contrast, Facebook rolled out their service with the a few partners, many of which have still yet to go live.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Google Makes a Hard Push With Friend Connect

nickoneill — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:51:01 +0000

Tonight I’ve been seeing a lot of buzz about Friend Connect, Google’s open initiative to take of Facebook Connect. The service lets you login using your Google, Orkut, or Plaxo account. Both MySpace and Facebook decided to opt-out of integrating into the service but bloggers are embracing it at a rapid pace. Last night Google sent out a large number of invitations to bloggers to install their service.

The result is now a large number of blogs with Friend Connect directly integrated with their service. Surprisingly absent from all those sites? Facebook. Take a look at Twitter and you’ll see a surge in chatter about Friend Connect over the past few hours. I’ve had a few friends mention their new integration with Friend Connect. Facebook appears to still be rolling out the service on a one-at-a-time basis.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Google Responds to Facebook's Exit from Friend Connect

nickoneill — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:14:14 +0000

Yesterday afternoon Facebook announced that they would be leaving Facebook Friend Connect due to privacy issues. Ultimately the post sounded as though Facebook was concerned about users putting their personal data at risk. Well, Google has sent us a statement in light of Facebook’s decision:

We’re disappointed that Facebook disabled their users’ ability to use Friend Connect with their Facebook friends. We want to help you understand a bit more about what’s going on on the Friend Connect side with respect to users’ information.

User privacy is of the utmost importance, and Friend Connect was designed to strongly preserve it. The larger issue here is users’ control of their data. People find the relationships they’ve built on social networks really valuable, and they want the option of bringing those friends with them elsewhere on the web. Google Friend Connect is designed to keep users fully in control of their information at all times. Users choose what social networks to link their Friend Connect account to. (They can just as easily unlink it.) We never handle passwords from other sites, we never store social graph data from other sites, and we never pass users’ social network IDs to Friend Connected sites or applications.

For example, here’s what an application running on a Friend Connected site can access about a user, Joe, who has linked in his hi5 account:

7547238438 joe [picture] 9438265867 8348357012

Translation: Not much. A third party app has access to:
- Your Google Friend Connect ID. This is a number. It is not a name, and it is not your hi5 ID.
- Your friendly name that you entered into Friend Connect (or from hi5 if you didn’t).
- Your photo. And only if you’ve chosen to make that photo public on hi5.
- The Google Friend Connect IDs of any of your hi5 friends who are also members of this site. (NOT all of your hi5 friends. Not their hi5 IDs.)

That’s it. These apps have no knowledge of who these friends are. They have no access to additional profile data — yours or your friends’. No idea who else is on your friends list on your social network.

Google’s statement attempts to discount Facebook’s argument that data is insecure. What I think we are witnessing at this point is simply a battle of the PR teams at both companies. Google attempted to make an announcement that included Facebook for the soul purpose of discounting Facebook’s platform and making the playing field appear level.Ã‚ At this point, it is now completely a PR battle which has been successful so far at generating a lot of buzz. We’ll see how long this lasts.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.