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Making Web Pages Social
To socialize these days, hundreds of millions of people every month turn to social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook.
But what if the Web itself worked as a social network?
Google announced today another step in what its engineers see as that inevitable evolution. A new free service from the Mountain View, Calif., tech giant will allow any Web site to become a social site.
Using Google's new Friend Connect product, any Web page, whether it is devoted to curling or pizza or a folk singer, can allow visitors to make and connect with other "friends" who visit that site. Like any major social network today, any Web page using Friend Connect could easily present to each user the names and pictures of friends and potential friends. Those people could then post messages to one another.
The announcement from Google comes at a time of ferment and speculation over how people will socialize on the Web.
While large social networks such as Facebook and MySpace are judged to be worth billions, they have also drawn criticism for being "walled gardens" -- places that allow members to connect easily only while at those sites.
The Friend Connect service raises the possibility that the kind of kibitzing now largely contained in a handful of mega-sites could be easily spread anywhere.
"We're in the middle of a huge change," said David Glazer, an engineering director working on Google's social initiative, in an interview. "Wherever people go on the Web, they want to have their friends with them, and this makes it possible."
Friend Connect is aimed at the millions of Web sites that could benefit from having members interact, but are unable to open their Web pages to such connections because of a lack of technical expertise or hardware.
With Friend Connect, the owner of a Web site would add a snippet of code to its page. Google's servers would handle the rest.
For example, one of the first Friend Connect customers will be independent musician Ingrid Michaelson, who like most entertainers has an official Web site ( http://www.ingridmichaelson.com). Now her fans can befriend one another if they visit her MySpace page.
But using the Friend Connect service, Michaelson will be able to allow fans who visit her site to connect with their friends, or make friends among fellow fans, without having to leave the site. Visitors will be able to see which of their friends are posting comments or attending concerts, all at her site.
Friend Connect is "about helping the 'long tail' of sites become more social," Glazer said. "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."
Friend Connect for now will be available only to a limited set of Web sites. While Google will receive no immediate financial reward for Friend Connect, Glazer said the company benefits when "the Web is healthy." When more people use the Web, more people see the ads that Google runs on Web sites.
Many companies have come to believe that to survive the changing social evolution of the Web, their products must remain relatively open, allowing users to easily transport their list of contacts and other information from one Web site to another.
Last week, MySpace and Facebook announced plans in this regard, in a sense lowering the walls of their walled gardens.
At the same time, Web businesses have begun to create standards for social site interactions on the Web -- OpenId, OpenAuth, OpenSocial -- that has further enabled users to move easily, and socially, from one Web site to another.
Such changes seem likely to alter the nature of the big social sites, people in the industry said, as the social aspects they are known for become accessible across the Web.
"The real question for a Facebook or a MySpace is: Is it best to think of them as a place like Studio 54 -- a place where everyone wants to get in because all their friends are in -- or is it more like some kind of utility?" said John McCrea, vice president of marketing for Plaxo, a company that maintains relationship information for 20 million members. "This is the evolution of the walled garden to the social Web."
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