Google Friend Connect - Update!

If you haven't yet heard about Google Friend Connect, please read my previous posts here, and on Techcrunch.

Google rolling out some changes in the gadget you may want to check out:

1. Activity streams across friend connect sites - click on my profile image to see an example.
2. Every friend connect site you join "publicly" is listed in your profile. (Google will be introducing a mechanism to pick and choose, and reorder at some point)
3. A better looking setting page with the ability to add some "about me" info and relevant links.
4. Picture picker.
5. Numbers. The gadget shows how many members you have, and how many of them are friends.
   

More to come:

• Better handle all this new data that is showing up in a user's profile
• Layout more nicely in narrower dimensions.
  
  

Although this service is not open to the public, there are two things you can actually do right away: and that is to fill in your profile with some information + links, and to browse friends in my community. Then you can add them as your friends, based on relevance:



That said, the concept of connecting friends easily needs more improvement: For example, once I've added my 'about me', it should go with me to each community I'll join (like the activities and links to sites I've joined). Right now, it doesn't - which mean you'll have to rewrite your profile over and over again..

Another thing is the search. If I have already more than 400 members, I really want to be able to search their names to see more info about them. FYI @all: you can see the list of members on the 'manage members' section once you're setting your site on Google Friend Connect, but you won't be able to see any other information, including links.

But overall I'm very pleased with the new changes, and I'm sure looking forward to see what's next.

Will update here of course.