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How to Add Social Media to Your Blog or Website: Google Friend Connect

Published by JF December 30th, 2008 in Cool Tools. Comments

google friend connect

Google recently launched Friend Connect to let anyone add social media features to their website or blog. This can include a chat, a rate and review, or a photo sharing feature.

What’s neat about Friend Connect is you choose the social media feature you think works best on your site. It’s simply a matter of choosing a feature from a list and copying and pasting the code. You can also customize the widgets. With GFC, you also get the ability to grab other open source social widgets and add them to your site.

Although I like the technology behind GFC, I’m not sure I want folks waltzing in at 3 a.m. to post a picture of the drunken party they attended.

Watch the videos below to see if this is something you’d like to try. I would be interested to know how GFC might help a real estate agent. Any ideas?

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  • OK. This is a seriously cool concept. I can see my Edmonton, Alberta real estate site really benefitting from this service.

    Now to find the time to play with it...
  • What social widgets do you use, John?
  • Great blog post. Social media truly is beneficial in just about every industry these days. Glad to see this particular industry embracing it more and more.
  • This Techcrunch post should help clear up some of the questions you might have about Google's direction. It sounds great to have people able to log into your site with their Google username/passwords, especially if someone is a blogger that is not currently offering member accounts etc. Site operators that are offering members accounts may have too many unanswered questions to move forward with it:

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/26/why-google...
  • Yep. I like MyBlogLog for the reason Mike mentioned and I have used a chat
    feature on the blog which allowed comments. I know Noah of UrbanDigs had
    chat for a long time but no longer. I guess it may come down to the social
    "gadget" and your site and what you hope to get from the gadget.
  • I've been running it since day 1 of beta.
    I have just over 100 people who have added themselves to my blog.
    Still not sure what it all means but I do know who they are, what blogs they write and unlie MyBlogLog - I know what other sites they like and have joined. By following that trail I have found and added a couple of new sites to my daily read that I didn't know about.
  • Thanks Mike for sharing your experience and insight. Does monitoring cause
    any concerns?
  • No concerns from me so far. Then again, I'm not one of those that spends a lot of time watching my stats either.

    One of the nicest things (as opposed to MBL) is the ability to see a members picassa, blog, etc. without leaving the site I'm on. Sometimes if I see a new person pop up and see they have a twitter - I'll follow them and send hem a DM.
  • Maybe it works like 7 degrees of separation-- the more you know about the
    groups and interests of others, the more likely you are to find similar
    ground on which to form a relationship.
  • The availability of gadgets and ratings are a good idea, but do site managers have the time to monitor these postings?

    There is also the likelihood that one person (or a team) will take the site hostage, by routinely soliciting rebuttals to their comments posted in obvious "poor taste." I've seen this happen to forums that I used to enjoy. There's always one person who spends an inordinate amount of time downing everyone else, stacking the posts with his uninformed opinions, and inciting everyone else to riot on an almost daily basis.

    That aside, it's certainly something to consider going forward.
  • Yes, I agree. The monitoring aspect might make it difficult to use successfully on a business site.
  • It seems like another app. that serves as social proof for a blog. No? I mean isn't that why we add widgets like: mybloglog, feedburner subscription chicklets, etc.

    I haven't tested GFC to formulate any thorough ideas on how it might otherwise benefit an Agent but that's my initial take on it.
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