Facebook Connect Vs Google Friend Connect – Who Should You Connect With?
Both Facebook and Google were working for sometime on their respective connect platforms to brings social networking features and data portability from their platform to any other platform that wants to use a facebook or a google id. The connect platforms are much like open id which allows users to have a single sign on across the sites but what it also has is the social features that it brings both in the case of facebook and google. In facebook the minifeed gets updated while google has google gadgets that add social features to your site.
Finally they launched both their platforms for the public yesterday. This post tries and pits them against each other:
Facebook Connect: Facebook had announced the connect platform at the F8 Developer Conference in July. It had also announced 24 partners which included the likes of Digg, Six Apart, and Citysearch for this platform.
What does Facebook Connect offer?
- Trusted authentication: Offer Facebook users the option to log in to your site with one click.
- Real identity: Integrate your users’ Facebook identities into your site.
- Friend linking: Let your connected users find their Facebook friends on your site.
- Dynamic privacy: Enable users to bring their information and privacy settings with them to your site.
- Social distribution: Allow users to share actions and information from your site with their friends on Facebook including publishing Feed stories to profiles and sending requests.
How can a Website integrate Facebook Connect?
The steps are about 6-7 of them which includes creating files on the server and copy pasting codes. A demo of facebook connect in action here. Facebook can also integrate with blogs and has done so with the popular tech blog techcrunch where users can comment using their facebook id.
Is this easy to do? Is it worth my time?
Well at the outset I must say that inorder to get facebook connect up and running you would have to be a developer. As without developer knowledge it would be tough to get it right. On the whole I think facebook has made it tougher for webmasters to integrate their platform with connect. Though it is really valuable as it has a viral impact for your content. For example you are running a blog and your visitors who comment their mini feed shows up on their facebook account informing all their friends that they commented on your site. Hence in effect every action taken by a facebook connect user will have a viral impact.
What is needed from facebook?
A plugin for wordpress? Yes bloggers are not only a source of great word of mouth but also a great way to spread traction back to your site. If the way facebook connect is enabled on Techcrunch would be available to all wordpress bloggers in the form of a plugin then that would be great! There was an attempt made by a spanish developer though his site isn’t working now. Im sure someone would do this sooner or later.
Google Friend Connect: Google friend connect has partners with the likes of Yahoo, Aim and Open Id to being single sign on and social features to third party platforms.
What does Google Friend Connect offer?
Check out the intro video below to know more:
How can a Website integrate Google Friend Connect?
Google friend connect integration is much simpler as compared to facebook as it involved copying two files to your server and then copy pasting the google gadget code that you want to use on your site. As the video shows above one can use it for comments, rating etc.
Is it easy to do and Is it worth my time?
Yes it looks fairly simple and is a great way for any webmaster to add interactivity to his/her site. Also as the gadgets can be unlimited there is no cap on what can be done with this tool. The only thing is I wish there was an orkut integration i.e. everytime a user participated one my site his feed on orkut should throw up my sites address similar to facebook’s mini feed.
Facebook Connect Vs Google Friend Connect -- The Verdict
Well the verdict is fairly clear in the way these two are positioned. Facebook by virtue is looking for premium publishers to integrate its connect platform and hence the developer requirement which in itself filters the self run blogs and bloggers. Google on the other hand looks to be catering to the long tail of publishers be it any blogger to engage a community around its platform.
So in essence Google Friend Connect enables you to build/aggregate a community and some amount of interactivity to your site while facebook is all about expanding your community i.e. more viral impact via feeds.
All in all from an impact perspective I think a facebook would benefit a site more than google would even though the interactivity features in google are more and its easy to integrate on the whole it does nothing to impact the traction of the site as the participation via google friend connect doesn’t have the viral impact that facebook connect has.
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I think minifeed is available in orkut too.
Awesome rundown on the two services. You’ve come to pretty much the same conclusion I have it would appear. I just wrote a post up on this very subject with a few extra points you maybe interested in.
@Ankit: Yes Ankit I know and have mentioned the same
I don’t agree. For small publishers the viral effect from Facebook will be minimal. Whereas, the long term benefits of a (more open) Google ID will make it easier for users to join. Facebook definitely has the more interesting profile data currently, though.
Where did MySpace Data Availability Program Go??
@Rohan Dighe: May be this may answer ur question -> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/9Wj1LFlmnC4/
I don’t understand why everyone thinks, or gives the impression that Facebook Connect is the more viral model?
Facebook currently has a huge user base, but Facebook Connect can pass your data down only one channel (to and from Facebook), where as the data Friend Connect on friend connect can land up on any other Friend Connect site.
Isn’t that the much more “viral” model?!