Well… Google’s in. It’s official. I’m sure you’ve heard the news that the internet giant joined Facebook (Facebook Connect) and Myspace (Data Availability) this week when it announced it’s plans to expand its OpenSocial platform via “Friend Connect” to take advantage, and ultimately regulate, the new “social” web. When I got the news it didn’t surprise me. Google’s a friggin’ beast right? But what did surprise me though was the fact that there’s still a big piece missing…
So what’s the deal?
It should be noted that Google isn’t getting into the social networking space as a provider. They’re not creating a new Myspace, or Facebook, or Ning network. Nope…Google’s taking another angle. There’s all this buzz around Data Portability currently. Basically providing social functionality on OTHER sites. Myspace announced it’ll allow it, Facebook announced it’ll allow it. Hi5, Orkut, Plaxo, the whole lot is going to allow their social graphs, profiles, and functionality to be used on other websites. Cool right?
This is what we web publishers would get : (credit mashable for the images)
Now… in comes Google’s Friend Connect, and they decide rather than having web publishers need to learn all different types of code to port different social data to their sites…they’ll do it for us. They’re aiming to make Friend Connect the CENTER of all the portability by providing an easy, no coding necessary solution for publishers to add social functionality to their sites. So the image above.. now looks something like this:
Now that’s friggin awesome. An easy solution for web publishers to get a piece of the big social pie. Friends from facebook can chat right on your site, myspace groups can stay in touch outside of myspace. Site owners can grow their audiences by taking advantage of the social connections (friends, family, etc) members have established on their social networks. This gives way to the ability to target your readership, enhance user experience, and analyze what your readers are do–Wait…can you really analyze what your readers are doing?
The missing piece with Google Friend connect…
And thats where the floor dropped out from underneath me. The main reason why I would use Friend Connect is to build a larger audience for my websites, and at the same time analyze what that audience is doing, saying, and sharing. Yet… Friend Connect misses that piece. Sure visitors can chat, share, and link up with each other on my “Friend Connect Enabled” site, therefore increasing THEIR own experience. But it doesn’t seem like theres away for me to tap into the API and really analyze their social graphs. So far, Friend Connects more of a widget placed on your site via an Iframe similar to Mybloglog. If I can’t really dig into the system, learn who my sites visitors are and their trends, then really is the whole idea worth it? I’m better off setting up a Ning or KickApps network and building my own social network if thats the case.
*Sigh* Maybe I’m ranting…its definitely still too early to tell the final result. Currently Google’s metering access to Friend Connect and there’s quite the wait list. The idea definitely looks promising though. Hopefully it doesn’t under-deliver.
I’m sure we’ll see soon. In the meantime take a look at FireFly, a new app that’s alot similar to the FriendConnect idea. Might be promising too. 
