Google Friend Connect was a free social networking site established on the May 12, 2008. Similar in practice to Facebook Platform and MySpaceID, it took a decentralised approach, allowing users to build a profile to share and update information (through messaging, photographs and video content) via third-party sites. These sites acted as a host for profile sharing and social exchanges.
Google Friend Connect used open standards such as OpenID, oAuth and OpenSocial and, by doing so, freed users from having to register for additional accounts or usernames. Once authenticated they could use their existing profile and access a social graph when posting messages.
It has been said that "social network APIs (how different services on the web talk to each other) such as the MySpace API, Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect take the online social graph beyond social networking sites to external web sites and applications". This social graph feature allowed a user to post a message on a third-party site, but allowed viewing access only to other authorised "friends" contained within the user's chosen social graph.
On November 23, 2011, Google's Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Hölzle announced that Friend Connect would be retired for all non-Blogger sites by March 1, 2012, and encouraged Google+'s pages and off-site Page badges as the preferred alternative.
Read more about Google Friend Connect: APIs, Statistics, History, User Data, Privacy, Competition, Third-party Sites
Famous quotes containing the words friend and/or connect:
“Do not forsake your friend or the friend of your parent; do not go to the house of your kindred in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is nearby than kindred who are far away.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 27:10.
“Such were the first rude beginnings of a town. They spoke of the practicability of a winter road to the Moosehead Carry, which would not cost much, and would connect them with steam and staging and all the busy world. I almost doubted if the lake would be there,—the self-same lake,—preserve its form and identity, when the shores should be cleared and settled; as if these lakes and streams which explorers report never awaited the advent of the citizen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)