Gigya brings in $11M to grow widgets
VentureBeat — ... Even though Wildfire already serves 1,000 widget makers and is bringing in some revenue by circulating branded widgets from big names like Disney and Kimberly-Clark, Gigya predicts that Socialize will soon surpass it in value as more sites join the social-networking fray. Already, the widget is able to aggregate friend data from sites like Facebook and MySpace, giving it an edge over competitor Google Friend Connect, which has not yet landed the support of the two networking giants. Socialize is also unique in that its open API allows ...

With Facebook Connect, Google Has Unique Integration Opportunity
louisgray.com — By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed) In working with Google FriendConnect recently, I realized that Google has a unique opportunity that perhaps they did not have previously. In only the last few months, Facebook has opened up the opportunity for any 3rd party site to integrate with Facebook, all via a special login button and form Facebook provides. Such technology is enabled through a product Facebook calls Facebook Connect. In playing with ...

Yahoo in the Hands of Developers
Mashable! — ... (YSP), a developer has a huge number of possibilities. The additional benefit of using these APIs is that you can have a social widget on your own site much like the initial plans for Google’s Friend Connect and ...

Some Thoughts on OpenID vs. Facebook Connect
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life — ... to fruition. The key question is whether we will see effective open standards emerge that will target the same scenarios [which eventually even Facebook could adopt] or whether competitors will offer their own proprietary alternatives? So far it sounds like the latter is happening which means unnecessary reinvention of the wheel for sites that want to support "connecting" with multiple social networking sites. ...

Google Profile Search
Google Operating System — ... to make them more social. "Yahoo! Profiles is a centralized control panel that lets you manage your identity, activities, interests, and connections across Yahoo! — and eventually the entire Web." The next challenge is creating an universal profile attached to a digital identity that gathers and filters all your disparate activities from the web. The move towards OpenID, OAuth, the integration of OpenSocial in Google's properties, the launch of FriendConnect are pieces from the same puzzle. { via Google Blogoscoped } ...

Google Friend Connect - Ready to Launch?
Digital Inspiration - Technology Blog — ... Google Friend Connect is a much-awaited service from Google that lets you add social features to any website or blog. For instance, your blog readers can join your site (remember ...

Google Friend Connect May Soon Launch
WebProNews Feed — ... YouTube tutorial appears For once, Google looked to be a half-step (or more) behind. Yahoo s testing a social new homepage, Microsoft s rolling out a social Windows Live update, and from the search giant, nada on this front. Except, it seems, for Friend Connect, which just might launch soon. Friend Connect promises to do much more than what its name suggests, allowing website owners to add all sorts of social functions like invitations, members galleries, and message postings. A preview release has been up for discussion since May of this year. Only, again, progress ...

Facebook Connect: Does Issuing Passports Make Facebook A Country?
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life — ... on service for the entire Web. It may be that Microsoft was ahead of its time (as I've argued it was with Hailstorm and other initiatives) but the arguments against centralized identity systems have seemed pretty convincing in the past. In addition, I suspect that developers will start asking questions when they realize that they have to support one proprietary technology for Facebook Connect, something different for MySpace Data Availability and yet another for Google Friend Connect. How many sign-in buttons will end up adorning these sites? ...

Social Web’s Big Question: Federate or Aggregate? [GigaOM]
GigaOM Network — ... , this is desperately important for the company to figure out how to make money. As a competitive matrix, here are some of other projects Facebook Connect is teeing off against: Google-sponsored Friend Connect, ...

Federal Facebook
Changing Way — ... rather more interesting when put in context. Om uses the Federate or Aggregate? context. Facebook Connect is an attempt to make Facebook the capital of the federation. Facebook Connect, which was announced in May and is being rolled out this week, allows you to use your Facebook login to access Facebook’s partner web sites, then broadcast what you are doing on those sites to everyone on Facebook. Other federal capital candidates include Google Friend Connect. Taking another approach is the “small army of startups, such as ...

Google Friend Connect Is Live
Digital Inspiration - Technology Blog — ... , the Google Friend Connect service is now live. You can get started by visiting google.com/friendconnect and clicking the "Set up a new site" button. ...

Google Friend Connect - now available for everyone
The Next Web — ... Google Friend Connect lets you do that now. This service was in a limited beta since May but now it’s open to all webmasters (open beta).  Friend Connect uses open standards like OAuth and OpenID to accomplish this task. The websites which uses Friend Connect can also run OpenSocial applications created by OpenSocial developer community. ...

Testing Google Friend Connect
Google Blogoscoped — ... Google Friend Connect is now open for everyone, allowing you to add certain social gadgets to your site. The set-up requires you to upload two files to your root (called "canvas.html" and "rpc_relay.html"), and then you can pick embed code for different gadgets. I've embedded gadgets below, and may update and edit this post during the testing... ...

Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect arrive
Obsessable News Feed — ... Both Google and Facebook want you and web developers everywhere to start using their account login info as the keys to get into all the different websites and webservices that you log into daily. Google launched Google Friend Connect today and shortly afterwards, Facebook launched ...

Google Friend Connect, Facebook Connect Face Off
Google Watch — ... It turns out that Google pulled the trigger sooner than expected, launching an open beta for Friend Connect today just hours before the official unveiling of Facebook Connect, as ...

Google Friend Connect Available
D' Technology Weblog — ... “you don’t have to deal with the hassle of creating yet another username and password — Friend Connect lets you log in using an existing account from Google, Yahoo, AOL, or OpenID. Similarly, you can choose to either establish a new profile or use profiles and friend sources from other social networks that have opened up their services, like Plaxo and orkut. ...

Google Friend Connect, Publicly Available
Google Operating System — Google Friend Connect, the service that lets you add social features to a site without writing any code, is now available to everyone. Users don't need to setup a special account for a new site: they can log in using an existing account from Google, Yahoo, AOL or using an OpenID. ...

Google’s Friend Connect Open to All
Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim — ... I know that I should be excited about the endless possibilities that Google Friend Connect will bring, but I can’t help wonder how this service is any different from ...

Google Friend Connect? Confusing! Facebook Connect? Not Bad!
Technologizer — ... –are similar. ( Very similar.) So are the overarching goals, which is to let folks use login IDs they already have to sign into sites and manage friendships all around the Web. But the emphasis of the two services are quite different. And based on my wholly unscientific first impressions, Facebook Connect is more fully baked. Google Friend Connect is pitching itself as an easy way for anyone with a Web site to add some community functionality in a hurry. (In that respect, it’s a competitor to ...

Getting Started With Google Friend Connect
louisgray.com — ... their plans to launch Friend Connect. Friend Connect allows website owners to incorporate social aspects and elements onto their sites. It's powered by ...

Confused yet? Fighting Facebook (and Google), MySpace updates data-sharing service
VentureBeat — ... There’s a separate piece of news here, having to do with Google. MySpace says it also plans to integrate its user identities with Google’s Friend Connect service. Friend Connect itself is a sort of rival to MySpaceID and Connect, that also launched last week. It lets a web site owner install a simple widget on their own web site, that contains social network-style user profiles. This allows a user to sign in using existing identities on Google, Yahoo, AOL and OpenID (a service that itself lets you sign on to web sites using other ...

JanRain Offers Distributed Social Options Galore, Interscope Geffen A&M Bites
ReadWriteWeb — ... and Google Friend Connect - two services designed to help user manage a single profile across multiple sites - launched on the same day. Then, MySpace followed in close succession with their ...

Twitter: Google Friend Connect’s social hub for the web?
VentureBeat — Google Friend Connect, a service for finding friends or making new ones on any web site, has integrated popular micromessaging service Twitter. This isn’t just a mashup of Web 2.0 buzzwords, it could be an interesting new way to socialize on the web. Here’s how it works, and why it could matter. Friend Connect is any easy-to-install widget that a web administrator places on their web site; it shows you other people who use the site, and lets you message back and forth with them. A user then clicks on the widget, and can choose to add ...

Connecting With Google Friend Connect
SOMEWHAT FRANK — Google Friend Connect debuted this past spring as it rolled out to a few different sites as part of a private beta program. The idea is pretty simple as it offers an easy way to connect with people on your site via a Google Gadget thus bringing community to a previously community-less site. I like to call it adding a party to a page. Wait a minute this seems like deja vu! Back in November 2006 MyBlogLog offered a similar widget that could be added to your site to help connect everyone in the blogosphere. MyBlogLog was quickly scooped up by Yahoo and ...

Facebook Wants to 'Connect' to Your Blog
Today @ PC World — ... offer similar programs to Facebook's Connect also. Google's Friend Connect allows users to sign in with their Google, Yahoo, AIM or ...

Your Social - Or Mine - Or Zuck’s (George’s)?
Paul Colligan's Profitable Podcasting — So, … Google has Friend Connect to bring us all together. Twitter has joined forces with them so we know this is going to be something big. Microsoft’s Zune Insider certainly hasn’t abandoned the “Social” of Zune.net but as this FriendFeed link shows, they’re, at the very least, expanding their thoughts on what the “Social” means (subscribe to them - snooping in on what they’re doing is extremely valuable market research). So, is it all folding into one big heep of “convergence ...

6 New Web Technologies of 2008 You Need to Use Now
Wired Top Stories — ... your digital identity, and yet most web users have only a tenuous grasp of it. That's because on the social web, identity is no longer just who you are. It's who you know, how you know them and how much you want them to know about you. On the web, your identity is explicitly tied to your relationships, both with your friends and with the websites you visit. Three great technologies came to fruition this year to help you manage these complex interdependencies: OpenID, Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect. These ID systems all offer a way to ...

Will the Online Identity War turn out like the XML Syndication War?
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life — ... and Google's weird amalgam Google Friend Connect. Slowly I began to draw parallels between the current situation and a different online technology battle from half a decade ago. ...

What Will Data Portability Mean to Marketing?
WebProNews Feed — ... come to light, and are becoming integrated with countless third-party websites. Websites that you will use. You will share actions that you previously would not have shared. More people will know about what you are doing on more sites. More people will read what you wrote in comments on more blogs. Basically, everyone will be watching your every move. Ok, that's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I think you see my point. I think managing your reputation is going to get harder Google Friend Connect But I could be wrong. I asked ...

Face It: Facebook Needs A Facelift
louisgray.com — ... platform and now Friend Connect are much nicer and I personally like their strategy more - integrating social elements with web properties that already exist and with tools that have real value. They seem more willing to let go and allow users to drive the network, not vice versa, a strategy I agree with. ...

25 Great Blogger Widgets
Mashable! — ... Google Friend Connect - A makeshift social network that runs across any site that has installed Google Friend Connect.  You can join a site, see the other members, play games and more. ...

The Time is Right to Kill Google (If They Don’t Kill Themselves First)
louisgray.com — ... First, Friend Connect. *sigh* This really was my tipping point with Google. (You’ll notice there are common threads between this example and the next one.) Back in mid-December I came across a blog post on this new Google platform extension. On the surface, I liked the idea. Everyone with a Google profile (most of us) could join the site and engage with each other through what Google calls “social gadgets”. My plan was to add ratings at the end of each post, however I ran (and continue to run) into a problem. ...

Imagine there’s no Google (Part 1)
The Next Web — ... no Blogger pictures appearing there. So no Blogger, of course. It’s not my main blog, but it’s a useful pointer to my online presence, and it does bring traffic to other of my resources. No Google Reader All my RSS feeds available on my mobile phone or any web browser - all gone. Good job I backed up the OPML file. But pity that was last month. No more shared articles for, or from my online friends - which also means… No Google Friend Connect ...

Google News Launches New Widget : NewsShow Wizard
Search Engine Journal — ... Secondly the widgetization of Google is a stepping stone to the expansion of their social connection and publisher relations. With YouTube embeds, Google Map embeds and other widgets comeing from Google, adoption of AdSense & Google Friend Connect by publsihers will grow as will the ability to view Google friends who have visited other sites in a StumbleUpon and Facebook type setting. Widget adoption by publishers in my opinion is the most important part of making this happen. ...

Google Friend Connect gets a handy toolbar
Webware.com — ... Google has launched a new option for site owners using its Friend Connect service. Besides the usual friends and discussion widgets, sites can now have a "social bar" which can sit atop, or at the bottom of their page. This facilitates user log-ins, as well as ...

New 'Social Bar' Widget Makes Google Friend Connect Less Intrusive
Wired: Epicenter — ... Google has added a new “Social Bar” to its repertoire of Friend Connect social widgets for your website. The Social Bar adds a toolbar along either the top or bottom of a webpage, allowing visitors to login and see what other Friend Connect users have been doing on your site. ...

Google’s New Social Bar: Who’s Using It?
Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim — ... Google’s Friend Connect got a new gizmo, or should I say gadget? Technically it isn’t a gadget because its main purpose is to organize the Friend Connect gadgets that a site uses. ...

Anatomy of "Connect"
O'Reilly Radar - Insight, analysis, and research about emerging technologies. — I'm here at Webstock in New Zealand working on my talk for tomorrow (Open, Social Web) and one of the things I've been thinking about is all of the different "Connect" applications and products that have recently sprung into existence. I mean, we have Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, MySpace (thankfully not "Connect") ID, TypePad Connect, RPX and I'm sure the list goes on. I'm trying to break down all of these products - ignoring the underlying open or proprietary technologies that make them tick - toward a straw man definition of ...

Facebook Launches Commenting Widget
ReadWriteWeb — ... Google, of course, already offers a similar service with Google Friend Connect, though this offers far more features than just the ability to leave comments. Google also allows users to sign in with an OpenID account, as well as with accounts from other vendors, including Yahoo and AOL. In the announcement, Facebook stresses that this is just the first of a number of social widgets based on Facebook Connect that the company is planning to release in the near future. ...

Chris Saad on Terms of Service issues: “Clear, jargon-free statements are needed.”
The Next Web — ... and Google Friend Connect, what do you see as the critical factors for any company looking to 1) verify identity and 2) act as a trusted keeper of personal data. ...

What's Your Digital Lifestyle?
Microsoft Watch — ... or Google Friend Connect offer some remedy to online social networking silos. But they're only a beginning, I say. I find some services falling into strange silos and others overlapping in weird ways. For example, 95 percent of my Windows Live Messenger contacts work for or are affiliated with Microsoft. AIM is a mishmash of everybody else, including eWEEK colleagues, family, friends, peers and people working for other high-tech companies. Most of my Twitter followers work for high-tech or PR firms. So I do little to no personal tweeting. Why bother? Facebook divides into ...

Blogger Gets More Social With Friend Connect Integration
Wired: Epicenter — ... social networking features of Blogger on Thursday by integrating its Friend Connect technology into the service. Now, anyone with a Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID account can log into Blogger and "follow" any Blogger blog. Choosing to follow a Blogger blog effectively adds the author to a user's social network, as they receive activity updates for that blog, and they can see what blogs that author, his friends and their own friends are also following. Friend Connect is Google's open-source system for building connections between social websites. ...

IntenseDebate Makes Comments More Interesting: Introduces Plugins
ReadWriteWeb — ... , which already offers integration with Seesmic, and Google's Friend Connect. None of these, however, offer the extensibility that IntenseDebate's new plugins now offer. ...

Facebook Connect Comes to YouTube with Green Eyed World by Coke Europe
Inside Facebook — ... movement and is building its own competing product in Google Friend Connect, YouTube opened up and partnered with Facebook for the Coke integration. While the companies still have some ...

Google's Black-Box Social Network
Bits — ... for most people. That may be the best way to make a search engine, map site and maybe even an e-mail service. But I don’t think it’s the best way to create services where people share sometimes very intimate details about themselves. For me, I don’t really want strangers to see pictures of my kids. But I love to show pictures of my kids to my friends. Maybe Google lets me do this, but the interface is too hard for me to figure out. I also find Google’s version of the social graph Google Friend Connect inscrutable. I think Google has a huge set of advantages in becoming a ...

Google Profiles: Still Not That Interesting. Yet.
Technologizer — ... , but it doesn’t travel over to your profile. And as far as I can tell, Google Friend Connect, which lets you add social-networking features to any site, has nothing whatsoever to do with Google Profiles. ...

Digg integration gives Facebook Connect a leg up in universal log-in battle
L.A. Times Tech Blog — ... Google Friend Connect makes some pretty bold promises to webmasters and bloggers, such as saying that using the service will "attract more visitors" to their sites. Its friend-building features and the ability to interact with other social networks makes it a sort of decentralized social network. Friend Connect can be easily implemented on Blogger since both services are run by Google. ...

Google Friend Connect Adds Comment Translation
TechCrunch — For sites that use Google Friend Connect and its comment widget, there is now a novel new feature: comment translation. The comment widget plugs into Google Translate to allow readers to translate comments left in foreign languages. This will be a boon to international blogs and sites, such as Go2Web20, which use Google Friend Connect as a login system. Now you can talk to people half-way around the world, even if they don’t speak the same language. Sort of. The translation is still machine translation, but it is usually good ...

Google Friend Connect gets comment translation
Webware.com — ... Google's Friend Connect just got a really neat new feature: comment translation. It can now unify the language of any comment thread, turning any and all comments into one language. This means that if you have one post in Mandarin, another in Spanish, and yet another in Russian, you can click an option to read them all in the same language. Google is using its own Translate API to do the dirty work, which means whatever unintentionally bad translations it would do on the Translate site will happen on comment threads. Friend Connect users who already have ...

Google Friend Connect Now Speaking In Tongues
TechWeb — Google on Thursday extended Google Friend Connect , its social gadget set for Web site owners, across language barriers with an enhanced comments gadget. The revised comments gadget allows Web site visitors to post and read comments in their own language through Google's automatic translation technology. "With this gadget, visitors from all over the world can leave messages in their native tongue, and other viewers will be able to instantly translate these comments into the language of their choice," said Google Friend Connect product manager Mussie Shore ...

Google CEO Says Microblogging Coming to Google Search
ReadWriteWeb — ... Friends could help answer the questions you're asking of Google or they could let you know what they are doing, like a home town version of Google News. If you check out Google Friend Connect, imagining that integrated into search isn't hard at all. ...

Adding Google Friend Connect is an example of how hard it is to join the 2010 web
Scobleizer — ... One of the first things I wanted to do this morning was to add Google’s Friend Connect widget to my blog. You can now see that component on the right side of my blog, right above a widget that adds Facebook Connect capabilities. ...

Google.com has new logo updates: Company becoming less innovative, and more creative on the design side?
Josh Chandler — ... But since then, it has become particularly apparent that Google are currently lacking the once creative flair to really create new and interesting boundaries, which could only be exceeded by their own efforts, but now seems to be neglected, in the past year the only things that Google have made which are of any significance are Google Friend Connect, and the new (rarely used) web browser, ...

Google vs. the Real-Time Web [GigaOM]
GigaOM Network — ... It’s easy to imagine Google falling further behind in the real-time content game. The company’s slow entry puts it in the position Yahoo has held for years in search: behind the leader, always playing catch-up instead of spending creative energy on new advances. Google has struggled with social content, producing mixed results. Orkut, for example, was a hit in Brazil, but not in other major markets; initiatives like Friend Connect have shown little traction. It’s had better success as a search partner, as with its ...

Now It’s Simple to Add Google Mojo to Your Website
Webmonkey — ... User authentication is handled by Google’s Friend Connect single sign-on technology, so participants can log in using either a Google account or any OpenID, such as a MySpace, AOL or Yahoo login. This opens up participation to just about everyone on the web, not just Google users. ...

Zynga Wants Apple to Build Facebook Connect Into iPhone [TheAppleBlog]
GigaOM Network — ... But the potential of Facebook Connect, or Google Friend Connect for that matter, could appeal to a much broader audience than just social game devs. Because FB Connect leverages the power of your social networking sites in the context of virtually any web-connected application, the possibilities that present themselves when you combine this tech with a device as prolific and app-oriented as the iPhone are endless. In theory, you could then have one cohesive identity for all web, phone, and app usage, all from your smartphone, where it makes sense, ...

Facebook Connect: Ace in the Hole
901am — Nicholas Carlson reports that Facebook Connect, the service that allows Facebook users to log into third-party sites using their Facebook credentials, is seeing rapid adoption. Just seven months after launch, over ten thousand sites have integrated the service — from mainstream hangouts like Hulu, to geek havens like Digg, to personal WordPress blogs through a plugin. So what’s so hot about Facebook Connect, especially in competition with Google Friend Connect? I’ve compared the two services in a previous post, but ...

Google Friend Connect Now Available in Telugu (and 46 Other Languages)
Mashable! — ... widget (or “gadget” in Google’s terms) on your site, you’ll now be able to offer it in the language most used by your visitors, with all of the gadget’s content appearing in the selected language. You can change the language of your gadgets by logging into your Friend Connect account and navigating to the “Site Settings” page. ...

Dear DoD, the Web Itself is Social
O'Reilly Radar - Insight, analysis, and research about emerging technologies. — ... Google Friend Connect - Friend Connect is one of Google's projects to bring social features to the long tail of the web. It provides the ability for non-technical site owners to bring sign in, profiles, following, "comment walls", and other ...

Google adds translation to Docs
Webware.com — ... Google has been quite busy adding translation to its other products over the last six months. Both Gmail and Google's Friend Connect services have both received translation upgrades. In Gmail's case, ...

Google Friend Connect Launches an Array of New Features – Becoming the Anti-Facebook
The Next Web — ... Google Friend Connect, the popular service from Google allowing website owners to add social functions without coding to their websites, is expanding their service today to allow for a much deeper social experience. ...

Google Friend Connect Introduces New Ways to Make Friends, Send Newsletters and See More Highly Targeted Ads
ReadWriteWeb — Google just announced a number of major updates to Google Friend Connect (GFC), the company's set of tools that can bring social networking tools and widgets to any site. Today, Google is extending this functionality with a new 'Interests' section that will help a site's visitors to get to know each other, a newsletter tool and gadgets that display personalized content recommendations. Google now also allows site owners to connect the data they gather from their users with AdSense to display more highly targeted ads. Sponsor ...

Google Aims to Put the "Friend" in Friend Connect
WebProNews Feed — ... Google has launched some new features for Google Friend Connect, aimed at letting site owners make their GFC experience more personalized and letting their visitors get to know each other. ...