Google Friend Connect: and Facebook Connect Compared
Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect have just been launched and offer a means of integrating social media and social networking elements into a traditional web site.
The two companies have adopted completely different models for adoption.
Google start from behind in this area: they don’t have a successful social media platform, but they do have a lot of users. They’re therefore cleverly building their platform on top of existing web sites.
Google has made it easy – it took about 10 minutes to set up Google connect to work with this web site and involved only a limited amount of copying of files and code. No programming was required. We can now add functionality to enable our site visitors to share information and videos, connect with each other and comment on our information.
In short, we’re able to create a community around our sites in minutes. For users, there the immediate benefit that they don’t have to create any new login accounts – it just works so long as you have a Google, Yahoo or AOL account.
Facebook has long tried to maintain a walled garden – keeping users on their site as much as possible. As a successful incumbent, it is in Facebook’s interests to maintain the status quo. However, they have recognised the competition and are therefore offering a technology platform which enables Facebook features and logins to operate on third party web sites.
Integration with Facebook is far more technically involved than with Google, requiring a knowledge of the system and integration. It’s clear their main target is to integrate with the larger Internet brand names such as Digg.
Most small businesses will probably be content to maintain a Facebook business page and link to it from their main site. Facebook’s success will depend on adoption by high traffic sites and whether users see much benefit from adding additional social elements to already social media aware sites.
For smaller businesses, at the moment the biggest question is why you wouldn’t add Google Friend Connect to your site. Make it easy for users to work with you and keep them coming back.
Here’s some tips on how you can use Google Connect to best effect, both as a web site owner and as a web user.
Google Profile & Google Connect are Social Networking Game Changers | Internet Marketing for Tourism.
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