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by: Anne Haynes

Google is launching Connect Friends services to enhancement websites with social networking features. Ingrid Michaelson, an independent musician, will be the first to test out the super search engine’s service.

In the Washington Post today, Peter Whoriskey touches on one of my biggest beefs with social media and networking; registration, userids and passwords, importing friends. In a previous post I touched on the social media industry and why there needs to be more integration.

I’ve been spending a good amount of time in FaceBook these days; petting my dog Rex, sending Slide/YouTube videos and cleaning up requests. I don’t know about you, but my experience in FaceBook feels like a messy house that never gets clean no matter how much time you spend cleaning. I keep deleting or hiding invitations, threads and post, but I never feel like my FaceBook page is presentable. It also feels like a big can of SPAM! If you need points to play games in your FaceBook applications, you can sign-up for BlockBuster.com and receive 2500 points to train, feed and pet your dog Rex. FaceBook is so busy with activities and SPAM that you couldn’t make a decent widget or gadget out of FaceBook. I am seeing a ton of marketing efforts within FaceBook and I’m guilty of marketing products on my FaceBook Page see my flickr photo of thecandleshop.net’s special occasion scented candle.

Let’s think about this Google Connect Friends service a little more…. Google Connect works with any website on the internet. No need to use an open source CMS system to build a social network, you can just add a snippet of code to an existing page on your website and instantly, users that are on your website can interact with each other real-time. Is it going to be like Second Life hits the web; pick a look, change your back ground and dance on cnn.com? Or is Google Connect Friends going to be more generic? I don’t know, but it’s going to be fun to watch the beta. Whatever Google Connect does, I hope it comes in a gadget format. I like to interact with my web services; Twitter, Google Talk and Digg using my iGoogle.

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