Social networking will blanket us all!

I have just come across the latest development in social networking sites. It's really quite amazing. It’s called Friend Connect, and it's the latest thing from Google.

Friend Connect is a collection of standards meant to make low traffic sites more social by harnessing existing social networking user bases. Google’s set of widgets let web developers quickly drop in code for widgets like sign-ups, comments, or really any other in web application. Google Product Manager Mussie Shore explains what it can do and how to use it in this video.

With this new Friend Connect, anyone who has a website now has the ability to have comments, photos and videos posted on their site without any effort as the site owner. Similarly, networks within these websites are now possible and do not necessarily need to be created by the site owner.

So what does this mean, other than people will be able to connect with each other in just another way? This is where Chris Anderson's Long Tail configuration of popularity could be shaken up a bit. That 80% of sites with low traffic now have the ability to connect with potential users more readily. Will it begin to level out or will it remain just as it is now?

It could be argued that perhaps Google is trying to make profit from the growing popularity the social sites are starting to have and of the fact that more and more people are starting to own accounts on more than one site, making them wish for a service where contact information can be exported.

On the other hand, they are still a business, however much we seem to rely on them as an essential tool and molders of the direction of virtual culture. Also, a growing number of web page owners are trying to take advantage of this popularity and create a loyal community on their web pages by adding social capabilities.

Google’s Friend Connect has the ability to satisfy both communities, of course while luring people to spend more time online, where Google’s ads can be seen.

A worthy of note blog I came across on the topic is called Google Blogoscoped, and focuses on pretty much anything Google. Author Philipp Lenssen is a little pessimistic when explaining the search engine giant’s possible intentions:

Google seems to be trying to be the web features and account provider for the web at large – they allow other account providers, but they continuously bring the Google account more close to the action by positioning it near useful stuff (like the recent Google App Engine) – and in turn offer you some “lazy features" for your site that you can plug-in. This way, you don’t need to switch to e.g. Blogger.com if you just like the comments feature, or develop Facebook applications to create stuff that connects to Facebook. (Lenssen, 2008).

So much control by one organization seems to be against the idea of the Internet, which may be why there is such doubt on the topic of this new Friend Connect. The direction of Web 2.0 appears uncertain. The potential of such new capabilities is sure to open up brand new realms in the Internet.

References:

Author unknown. (May 2008). Google Friend Connect Lauched: Google Blogosphere. Available from: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-05-13-n12.html. (Accessed May 14 2008).

Jenkins, Henry. (2006). Introduction: “Worship at the Altar of Convergence" in Jenkins, Henry, Convergence culture: When new and old media collide, New York: New York University, pp.1-24.