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SAN FRANCISCO : Google has set out to enable all websites, free of charge, to be imbued with common social networking features as the Internet evolves toward becoming a giant community along the lines of MySpace or Facebook.
Google Friend Connect was previewed at a Campfire One gathering of third-party software developers at the company's "Googleplex" campus in Mountain View, California on Monday.
The unveiling of the plan comes just days after top social networking websites MySpace and Facebook broke down walls of their online communities to let members share profile information at other websites.
"Social is going mainstream," Google director of engineering David Glazer said during a conference call with reporters.
"What used to be hard and proprietary is becoming easy and open. It's the evolution of social networking."
Glazer described the MySpace and Facebook announcements as "big steps forward in giving users control over their data" and said Friend Connect is intended to further advance the movement.
"We see the web moving toward an end state where people can use any application on any website with any of their friends," Glazer said.
"Social activity on the web has been bottled up in a handful of sites. As things mature on the web they become more open and more interoperable."
Friend Connect lets website owner's add social-networking features such as registration, member galleries, message boards, and fun or useful third-party applications called "widgets" by simply adding snippets of free computer code.
People visiting websites using Friend Connect will be able to interact with contacts they know from online communities such as Facebook, Google Talk, orkut, Plaxo or hi5.
To demonstrate, an iLike application was incorporated into an official website of musician Ingrid Michaelson so that visitors don't have to leave to connect with friends at their social networking profiles.
All website operators using Friend Connect see are user nicknames and images, if any, posted along with them.
Concerns about protecting people's profile data prompted Google to decide to work individually with website operators interested in Friend Connect, according to Glazer.
Website owners are invited to put their names in a "white list" queue online at www/google.com/friendconnect.
Google wants to be at the heart of the Internet trend of people building online identities that play, share, and conduct business in virtual environments, according to Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle.
"Much like Google kind of controls the overall online advertising experience I think this is Google trying to figure out how to own the virtual representation of a person on the web," Enderle told AFP.
"Monetizing the virtual person on the web is where the money is and they are trying to figure out how to do that. If you want to have the door into my wallet you want to be as close to my information as you can get."
Google plans to phase in more websites and social networks in the months to come, with the Open Social software platform as a basis for interoperability. Google launched Open Social last year to promote common protocols so developers can make applications that work on any social networking website involved in the effort.
"The web is moving rapidly to being more open and more social and that is good for everyone," Glazer said. "And, yes, it is good for Google. When the web is healthy, and more people have more ways to be engaged online, our business is healthy."
- AFP/vm
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