Friend Connect is a great idea. Technically brilliant and easy to use it is a very exciting development that can bring people together to engage with content in new and exciting ways.
When open social was first announced I was sure it would be a really important stage in the development of the Internet, and still am. Should it really be down to Google govern the social web though?
It essence it’s brilliant as David Glazer from Google says “Social networking is going mainstream” which is great for connecting different people with different ideas and content across different websites using the same system. This makes it easier than ever for users to become actively engaged participants in the online community.
The more users who become actively engaged in the online community the more valuable their interactions become for brands and for users themselves who can have a shared digital experience.
The concern I have about Google increasingly moving to govern the social web is picked up in the BBC’s article on Friend Connect.
It’s a smart move by Google which is trying to play the role of United Nations secretary general by making sure everyone talks nicely to one another, getting the data to where they want to move it back and forward, and participate in open standards.
“Remember Google doesn’t do anything without thinking about, not only how can this benefit the larger community, but how can it benefit Google.”
Charlene Li, Principal analyst, Forrester
Google are a brilliant, innovative company who are moving things forward for the web as a whole; they are also an aggressive public company keen to acquire competitors and constantly grow through obtaining as much information about people that they possibly can, a bit too much perhaps.
As Charlene Li touches on there should be a non-profit based United Nations of the web who run a system like this which can develop the web from a non-partisan perspective. The W3C should perhaps take on more responsibility for governing the development of universal connection systems.
Read more for a Friend Connect demo video presented by Google Product Manager Mussie Shore.
