So what is up with Google FriendConnect and Facebook Connect?

Kim Schulz, saturday d. 6. december 2008

Last Thursday Facebook (re) announced their new Single-Sign-On (SSO) called Facebook Connect (it was previously announced to developers back in May).
Google have had a similar service called Google FriendConnect in beta for quite a while and of cause they could not resist the temptation and go release their service to the public just hours after the Facebook Connect service was announced.
But what is actually the difference between the two services?

Facebook Connect
Facebook connect is meant to be a service where private and commercial sites can let its visitors login with their facebook credentials instead of creating a new user on the page (e.g. a for a forum). Info and activities the user have on the website can be shared with the persons facebook friends and they can be invited to join as well.
As with all Facebook related development, it involves a mixture of PHP and Javascript and hence the webmaster must know how to use these in order to integrate Facebook Connect with their site. A good example page including source code is however available to make it easier for the webmaster.

Google FriendConnect
Google connect builds on top of the basic concepts from OpenSocial and Google Gadgets. Its functionality is currently still limited to a few "gadgets" like :

• a "members gadget - let people "join" your site, see what other members the page have, read their info and become friends with them as well. Friends from all OpenSocial supporting services(e.g. AIM, Plaxo, Orkut, Google, etc) can be invited to be friends (and their credentials can be used to login).
• a "Rating gadget" where the visitors can rate and comment on whatever the gadget is bound to (site, blog post, image, video etc).
• a "Wall gadget" where visitors can write comments, have simple "chats" etc.
• A "custom Gadget" where the webmaster simply gives a link to an OpenSocial gadget (xml file) or a Google Gadget from iGoogle and then this will be shown on the page.

I am sure that many more will be developed in the near future (As will all other "Google").
As with the Google Gadgets, it has been made very simple for the developer to integrate the Gadgets into a webpage. A few clicks and selection of the FriendConnect page and a snippet of javascript/html is generated. This code is simply pasted into the place on the site where the webmaster wants it to be. And that's it! Now the page visistors can enjoy the Gadget on the page.

I will take a more thorough look at the two services in the upcoming weeks. Until then, please feel free to add a comment and join my google FriendConnet service on my frontpage.

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