The Next Web

Google Friend Connect - now available for everyone

Written on December 4, 2008 – 9:57 pm
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr

Want to add social features to your site letting users share information and interact with friends while visiting some of their favorite websites?

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.

It lets websites access username and password of the users along with friends list, feed massages, profile info, reviews and other info.

Google Friend Connect competes with Facebook Connect and Myspace Data Availability in taking control over you online identity. Which one will you choose for your website? (Update: Facebook Connect just announced the general availability too! See a presentation here.)

The learn more about Google Friend Connect watch their presentation video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N94s7ix0JPo

I hope you like that post!

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data portability, facebook, friend connect, google, myspace, OpenSocial

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Google opens up their contacts, who follows?

Written on March 6, 2008 – 1:21 pm
Chris Obdam, Internet entrepreneur

As of today Google offers a API to sync with your Google contacts. In the quest for the Holy Dataportability Grail, the syncing of contacts through out different ‘contact’ services is the next big thing. Everybody owns several buddy- or contact lists. Keeping them in sync is hell, even when your using Plaxo or a Plaxo-like service.

Google’s API lets you read all of your contacts and use them in another application. The changes made in that application can be written back in you Google contact list. The API is part of Google’s Data API project and uses AtomPub as a format.

With opening up their contact information Google is the first of Internet biggest to create a portable contact list. For social networks, their user base are their capital so the question is whether social networks wil create contact list portability? Probably, opening up will be inevitable since portability is the future. When you can take of your contact list from one service to another, the only reason for using a social network will be what kind of functionality they offer. At the moment you pick a network because of the fact that all of your friends are on it. They next battle will begin when contact portability is widely excepted.

Of course Google’s Contact API is no portability standard yet, is doesn’t help you switch from GMail to Yahoo Mail. But it’s a start.Lots of people are working on syncing services for your contacts, a standard will only arise in the near future. More on contact list portability at the DiSo Project.

data portability, diso, google, Google Data API

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