Google is now making it easier for Websites to surface Friend Connect features with what it is calling the Social Bar. This is a toolbar that Websites can add to their homepage or any other page they wish, and then they can add links for drop-down gadgets that lets site visitors do things such as sign in via Friend Connect, see who else has signed in recently, check out comments, or site members, all from Social Bar. Here is an example.
Basically, the social bar is a small strip that webmasters can layer on top of any web page, either at the top or at the bottom. That way, website visitors are provided with a bit of information, and the bar also lets them interact with any social feature the site incorporates through drop-down gadgets. As Software Engineer Christopher Wren explains in the announcement blog post, this is a good way to save on pixel space and keep putting the actual content of the site forward first.
Here are some of the gadgets Websites can include in the Social Bar, from Google’s brand new Social Web blog:
- On the far left, visitors can join your site, see their identity, and edit their profiles and settings.
- Your visitors can also delve into your site’s activity stream to see what’s happening throughout your site. It includes links to recent posts made anywhere on your site, helping other visitors quickly find where the hottest conversations are taking place.
- The wall gadget can host a discussion for the whole site, a section of pages, or each individual page, letting your visitors easily read and leave comments.
- Lastly, visitors can see the other members of your site, check out their profiles to see how like-minded they really are, and even become friends.
The toolbar approach is both an attempt at ubiquity and invisibility at the same time. Google wants Friend Connect to be everywhere, but at the same time it doesn’t want to seem too pushy about being everywhere. Hence, the seemingly innocuous toolbar. But that toolbar expands with pop-down gadgets, which takes advantage of Google’s strengths with creating gadgets in iGoogle and elsewhere. Can a Facebook Connect toolbar be far behind?
Wow sounds really cool! Thanks for sharing. Saw it up on Twitter!
Seems like a mashup of the Blogger bar + the Facebook application bar at the bottom of the browser. Although Facebook Connect seems to be on more sites right now (which means it’s winning) including TechCrunch and just yesterday Brightkite (no big surprise they wouldn’t add Google Friend Connect after the Latitude launch) Google Friend Connect has a few thing going for it – it’s easier to integrate on WordPress (I’ve thoroughly tested this, although this is more a problem with current plugin development and not necessarily Facebook’s fault), and GFC has Twitter integration. The downside is that you can’t invite Twitter followers to follow you to GFC – yet. This bar could be a big win if it does something that they didn’t say it could do – and that’s show up at the bottom of individual posts – that would be a big deal indeed.
Chad
You are correct indeed Chad! I definitely see the potential with the new GFC Bar.
Mmm…a killer bar. Is this so 1.0?
Ingenius move by google – game changer
Interesting… reminds me of the Glue Bar (social shopping FF plugin)… but, importantly, this “bar” seems to really live on the site itself (not as a browser add-on).
Old stuff… This is exactly what our sixgroups.com Livecommunity provides for every website since months.
Example: http://www.mashupcamp.com http://webexber....crowdvine.com/
Okay, we are not Google, but hey…
Hmph, just tried it on a WP site. Unsuccessfully.
Christopher, I added the HTML to a sidebar widget on a WP site and the social bar shows on the top of the page. See if that works. I installed it on http://www.onehalfamazing.com
~bob
Thanks Bob, that worked – what did we do before widgets?!
It’s not perfect, as I suspect many sites will have to adjust their header. If the script would hide the bar or somehow minimize it to just the height of the “Google Friend Connect” and display fully on mouseover, that would be ideal.
You can see it on http://www.MyCookingShow.tv, but I think my wife will likely want it taken off until we can integrate it better.
What will be interesting is to see how Google provides deeper integration features through the API.
The new toolbar is great, but as an application developer, I’d like to exercise some creativity around how I can create value for my community of users.
Non-obtrusive…? What the deuce…?
How about a page-width banner in ugly blue on the top of your screen…?
I like the Facebook Connect integration much much more…
Congratulations to the Google team on launching their sitebar. It looks like a great product.
Talk about not ready for primetime…
I’m all for shipping early and often but this is seriously buggy code – did the engineers QA test it at all? Not to mention, the example leaves a lot to be desired. What does work doesn’t exactly work well. Basic interactions are just awkward.
Folks at the GOOG need to remember that not everyone is such a Google fanboy that they’re just gonna go modifying their site to add anything – try to convey clear user value. That’s clearly still missing here.
As much as Google wants to be a social hub it’s currently not. These developments are frankly awkward to watch.
AND!
So is this the same as FaceBook connect? I’ve been thinking of using the FaceBook connect on my blog but maybe I should check out the Google Friend connect too. Maybe both.
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I have Fconnect in my site, I think it is better
testing
i just installed this and it works nicely…loads ALOT faster than the member box….check out solar feeds and tell me what you think!
scott
This new social bar craze is baffling. They’re intrusive, distracting, and annoying. I truly hope floating bars don’t become the standard. Ugh.
Give me a Facebook Connect “bar” and has Facebook chat for the “connected” users and I’m sold.
good move by google
I don’t think Google Friend Connect is like Facebook Connect at all.
With Facebook Connect, your server side code can determine whether or not someone has logged in. If they are, you have many options. You can use the Facebook API, XFBML, and FBJS to make your site behave differently.
With Google Friend Connect, there doesn’t seem to be any way for your server side code to know whether or not someone is logged in (or has “joined”). There’s no API as far as I can tell.
Yeah you might get folks to act socially around your content, but you can’t leverage any of the content they might add outside of Friend Connect widgets. What gives? Maybe I’m just not getting it.
On my site: http://www. bookdope.com , you can login with Facebook Connect or with your Google Account, and my server side code knows and it remembers you. Then, when you tag books, I associate “you” (whether you’re a facebook user or google user) to the book and your specific tag. I can’t see how that’s done with Google Friend Connect. I suppose some widgets could aggregate “popular tags” and “your tags” but I can’t imagine (as the site develop) that I can’t store the tag in my own database and do something with it later.
Ok I’ll stop now. Perhaps there is an API in the works or you just don’t really need one.
Dale
Google has since come out with API(s), follow:
http://www.goog.../friendconnect/
Click on the “For Developers” link. I think the’ve addressed most everything I complained about here.
It would be nice if Google made the product to work on other google products
Friend connect looks great but if you use Google sites for your business or personal use you can not add friend connect to it they block it.
Now that is a great idea
What about SEO?
If the social content (reviews, tags, ratings, conversations, whatever) you collect via Google Friend Connect widgets resides somewhere else, and it only comes into your site via the magic of AJAX, it will never be crawled by search engines.
That’s a down side.
Dale
http://www.bookdope.com
I added this to my site a couple of weeks ago but these new updates are great. I really like the addition of the bar. I think it looks fine where it is and does not get in the way.
If you want to see this in action please check out my site at http://www.your...valleyhome.com/
I would appreciate if you joined my site as well. Thank you and Thanks Google!
It seems to be that for Google is not going to be only about search… now it is also about Social Media…
We have our own social bar: http://www.nearsoft.com
(at the bottom)
But, I think we are going to start experimenting with this new gadget.
I wonder how this Social Bar is viewed from the OpenID communiy’s perspective. This is clearly a way for Google to compete with Facebook in their quest to stay connected when navigating outside of their “online jurisdiction”. You can bet that this is just the beginning of the *data portability wars*
Looks f-ugly.
No serious webmaster would put that stuff on his/her site.
Will be interesting to see how which company will take the lead on this one: Facebook or Google. Both offer tremendously powerful possibilities
Thats nice, let me try
I tried it on my site http://www.only2clicks.com after you’ve logged on.
Some people love it some hate it
I can’t seem to figure out how to add it to my google site. Can anyone help?