torrance web design
Google helps the web to go social
Google has joined the drive to make the web more social by introducing tools to enable people to interact with their friends.
Friend Connect follows plans announced last week by the world’s two biggest social networking sites, MySpace and Facebook.
Data Availability and Connect let users move their personal profiles and applications to other websites.
"Social is in the air," says Google’s director of engineering David Glazer.
During a conference call at Google’s California headquarters, Mr Glazer told reporters: "Google Friend Connect is about being the ‘long tail’ of sites becoming more social."
"Many sites aren’t explicitly social and don’t necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard."
Charlene Li, principal analyst at Forrester, told BBC News: "Google is tapping into the ‘all things social’ heat of the moment, but it’s adding a different perspective, not as a data source and social network ‘owner’ but as an enabler."
Gamut of uses
At the heart of Google’s service is the use of Open Social which will allow third parties to build and develop applications for the site.
The company says with Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running right away without any complicated programming. This will run the gamut from invitations to member’s gallery and from message walls to review
Resources for
