Testing Google Friend Connect, 1, 2, 3!

Finally, with a little help from Google, I managed to add Google's Friend Connect to my blog.

Basically, Friend Connect is an admin page with several social gadgets that you can customize and embed in your site or blog.

The main goal of this service is to help you gain traffic from friends you already have - who are now connecting to you directly on your site, which make sense. Even visitors are allowed to join in, and invite their friends from familiar social networks:


So what else is on the Google Friend Connect admin page? (I know you want to know) - Actually not so much at the moment... From what I understand (although not verified) you can control more than just one site with it. You can also manage all your visitors from the admin page (i.e., delete, block etc.).

Only a few gadgets from Google itself are offered, but there is a growing section of gadgets built by developers and other companies, so I can only assume that it is going to become something as huge as the iGoogle gallery.

Friend Connect is the one heavily lifted gadget that leverages social functionality on any gadget that's built with Google's Open Social, whether it be on MySpace, 5hi, Orkut etc. You'll be able to embed it on your blog with just a few clicks. BTW, with Friend Connect, you can also give iGoogle Gadget a social boost.

And, then there's the Report section, which at least in my opinion seems to be not especially beneficial data and stats, especially since I only started to use this today. However, I know for a fact that Google is not storing users' data here, like it does on Google Analytics for example, so this will result in less or simpler data.


It is very early to give significant feedback at this stage, but a quick look at my growing list of friends on the widget, definitely ensures me that this Gadget works. I know it's very corny to say this about a Google product: it's simple but smart, but what can I say, it is what it is! Simple and Smart.

*BTW, I know it's a bit slow, and I know about some other bugs, but I'm happy to be an early adopter of this gadget, as long as it won't take my blog down...

Thanks RWW!