Google Launches Full War on Facebook - Friend Connect May Force Marketers to Change Social Network Strategies
May 15, 2008 – 8:14 amBy: Mallory Dash
I am 100% convinced Google is trying to take over the world. Google recently announced the launch of Friend Connect, a service designed to turn any website into a potential social network. While previously believed to be a direct Ning competitor, Friend Connect is instead a way to Web-2.0-ize already existing sites. According to the release from the Googleplex, “visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends…”. With the added clout of Google’s API capabilities and affiliations with existing social networks like Facebook, Myspace, Plaxo, hi5 and iLike, Friend Connect has a lot of potential to aggregate the disparate social networks out there, while eliminating some of the more minor ones.
According to Google’s director of engineering, David Glazer, Friend Connect brings its own social magic to any old Web 1.0 site. “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.” Good point- I’ve always wanted to know who looks at the same food porn sites I do. (Who needs JDate when you can have bacon?)
While there are obvious exceptions to the kinds of sites that would want to get down with the 2.0 (Dunder Mifflin Infinity, anyone?) Friend Connect could be pretty neat. Instead of having to make tons of different log-ins and passwords for random websites, Google handles these using OpenSocial, oAuth and OpenID, which allows users to bring their data with them wherever they go.
This could essentially spell the end for smaller social networks. The ability to view the activity of your Facebook and Myspace friends elsewhere on the Web could remove the need for individual, niche networks. Google is quickly becoming the Vladimir Lenin of the Internet era, socializing everything in its path (minus the serfdom and unpaid labor- that’s for Wikipedia).
For marketers, this could signal a huge change in current practices and market research. Many marketers already are using Facebook and Myspace to reach their target audience. However, Friend Connect may lead marketers to curtail their Facebook-only approach in favor of a more global strategy. Now marketers can focus on more targeted sites, and reach their desired demographic directly from those outlets, cutting out Facebook and Myspace’s networks as a middleman. Friend Connect could be a serious catalyst for change in any marketing strategy, should it take off.
For a more skeptical view on Google’s latest foray, check out Marshall Kirkpatrick at RWW. Regardless of the how selfish Google may or may not be- I, for one, am excited at the prospect of meeting more bacon lovers, online or off.


I can’t blame them as many bloggers just spew random thoughts at the screen and have no measurable authority (like pay for play bloggers). But those in social media know how important bloggers are, and need the numbers to show potential ROI to our clients.
Howard Greenstein wrote a great
While the micro-blogging service is already popular among Web 2.0 enthusiasts, Twitter is also
Saul Hansell of the New York Times