Internet giant Google has released a preview version of Friend Connect, a free service it hopes will make the  Mountain View, California-based company a key hub for easily sharing information from social networking Web sites such as Facebook with virtually any other site, Google announced Monday at its Campfire One third-party developer event held at the company's "Googleplex" headquarters. Making Social Networking More Convenient And Pervasive Even as Web sites and blogs have in some ways become easier to set up than ever, adding the variety of social networking features users of MySpace and Plaxo have come to expect has grown increasingly difficult, a problem Google aims to solve with Friend Connect. The Google service that will allow site owners not only to choose from among thousands of applications such as message boards, registration authentication, member galleries, reviews and other entertainment and professional tools, but will also let hundreds of millions of social networking users bring their personal online identities and lists of virtual friends along without having to recreate a new account profile for every site they visit. "It's pretty inconvenient to create a new account and try to rebuild a network of friends each time you visit a site," Mussie Shore, a Google product manager wrote of Friend Connect Monday on the official company blog. Shore said the service "lets non-technical site owners sprinkle social features throughout their websites," by adding, as Google noted in its press release, "a snippet of code to his or her site [to] get social features up and running immediately without programming." The list of applications made available through Friend Connect will eventually include those created for the Google-led OpenSocial initiative it launched in October 2007, a framework that allows social networking applications to be developed for use on any site that supports the open initiative. In March, Web pioneer Yahoo joined the OpenSocial alliance. Site Owners Can Apply For Inclusion On Test White List Visitors to sites using Friend Connect will be able to register and access their personal information from accounts created at Time Warner's AOL division, Google, OpenID and Yahoo, and by using secure  authorization application programming interfaces (APIs) they will also have the ability to see, invite or interact online with virtual friends from social networking sites such as Facebook, hi5, LinkedIn, Google Talk, Plaxo, Orkut and others, Shore noted. Friend Connect is itself a collection of APIs Google has been developing for some time. Google kicked off Monday's launch of the pilot Friend Connect program with several of its own applications for those taking part in the test to use, including message board and a user rating utilities, Shore added. Friend Connect could be used to, for example, connect fans of a particular restaurant with its owners and chefs and allow them to interact with one another, on a site operated by either the restaurant owners or by its fans. Google has encouraged site owners interested in Friend Connect to sign up on its www.google.com/friendconnect site, and to wait for a site review it conducts to make sure sites in the test meet certain Google minimum requirements before being added to its "white list" of trusted sites and blogs. "We're going to keep things pretty limited at first so we can gather feedback from site owners, developers, and users, but, in the weeks ahead, we'll be reaching out to more site owners and adding more social apps to the gallery," Shore noted. More Google Code On Web Pages Possible Friend Connect appears to be aimed more at site owners looking to implement social networking functionality rather than at consumers seeking more control over their own profile information from online social media destinations. Site owners can begin using Friend Connect by selecting which social networking applications they wish to use and then copying and pasting a section of Google code into the pages on their site where they want the new features, making it a relatively simple process but at the same time making Google more deeply ingrained in potentially millions of sites. The prospect of Google increasing its already large presence in the Web appears to be part of the company's plans according to one member of the online discussion forums operated by WebmasterWorld, a popular community of search engine marketing (SEM) professionals and webmasters founded by chief executive Brett Tabke. "Clearly, their goal is to get a bit of Google code on each and every page on the Web," the member, using the handle "zett," noted. The Friend Connect service will make it possible for users to do such things as log in to their favorite social networking site, continue on to a different Friend Connect enabled site, and while there share information about items of interest with their virtual friends back on the social networking site. At Monday's launch event Google announced several sites testing the preview version, and expects to add at least a dozen more over the next several days, with a wider release it estimates happening in the coming months. Launch Follows Similar Moves By MySpace And Facebook The release comes shortly after recent moves from MySpace and Facebook also aimed at making it easier to access information contained on their sites, which prompted Google director of engineering David Glazer to  proclaim, "Social is in the air." Glazer spoke with reporters about where Google sees Friend Connect fitting in on the Web. "Google Friend Connect is about being the 'long tail' of sites becoming more social," he said. "Many sites aren't explicitly social and don't necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard," added Glazer. The software engine that drives Friend Connect is the Open Social framework which enables programmers to create new applications for use on any site wishing to use them. The popularity of social networking sites over the past several years has risen to the level where Google, which has its own social site called Orkut, has implemented plans to become the central hub through which it hopes most social networking information will flow. "Social networking is going mainstream. It used to be proprietary, but now it's going to be open and baked into the infrastructure of the net, not just one site or one source," said Glazer. Some analysts see in Friend Connect a move by Google to become a sort of neutral third-party, assuring consumers that all their favorite social networking sites can talk seamlessly with one another, and at the same time increasing its own exposure and the potential reach of its core online advertising business. Should Google succeed in becoming the primary social networking hub, it may attract new customers and further strengthen its relationship with existing users who see the company as a vital portion of their online activities. MySpace, with its estimated 200 million users, and Facebook with some 70 million, are both vying to become the social networking hub as well. Glazer said that the announcements MySpace and Facebook made last week are in their own way "big steps forward in giving users control over their data," and noted that Google hopes its Friend Connect program will continue pushing the movement forward. Google Friend Connect Looks To Be Social Hub Of Web By adding social networking to vast numbers of sites, Web traffic to the main social sites themselves could drop off, some analysts caution, while at the same time Google expects the number of sites using Friend Connect to increase dramatically. Application developers who have in the past programmed so-called widgets - small programs that perform a function such as letting users list their favorite movies - strictly for one social networking site, and who later may have used the APIs made available last year by Facebook and MySpace to make their applications available to specific sites partnering with those companies, can now use Google Friend Connect to potentially make their widgets available to any Web site, and without losing any social networking functionality. The preview launch of the Google service may be the latest in a general move toward the Web becoming a more social network-like place, or, as another WebmasterWorld member using the handle "tomda" wrote Monday in the site's message forum, "The Web is slowly turning into a big bucket of shared data." The user went on to describe the Google Friend Connect project as "very exciting." Another member of the site is not surprised that Google made the move it announced Monday. "If anyone was going to pull this off, it would be the likes of Google," wrote a member using the alias "Webwork." Related Links:
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10:45 pm on May 13, 2008 (utc 0)