What is Google Friend Connect

This article describes Google Friend Connect, and how it can be used at the moment.

Google Friend Connect (GFC) was one of Google's earlier social-networking attempts, introduced in 2008.

Originally (you can still see the full description here), GFC promised a range of social features that website-owners, including bloggers, could include on their sites. including:

• Add GFC features to a website by installing snippets of HTML code onto the site, or or using the  API.
• Users sign in to your website, using GFC with an existing account (e.g. Google, Yahoo, AOL)
• Users can create or import profiles (e.g. Twitter), discover other users, and send private messages to each other.
• Social gadgets, eg for posting comments and links, rating and reviews, that you could add to your site, which your visitor could use once they had logged in with GFC.
• Website owners can set up questions to be asked when a user used GFC to join their site. The idea was for them to find out their member's interests - and that the information would be on the member's GFC profile.
• Tools to create, manage and send website newsletters, which could be personalised, based on the answers that members gave when joining the community.
• Matching AdSense ads on shown to users looking at your website site to the interests they had listed on their GFC profile.
• Tools to look at your user's interests and your site's membership statistics.

Effectively, Google Friend Connect was a group of tools, and some stuff in the background to make them work together:  The tools were for website owners who wanted to grow a community, and for "information consumers"  (that means people who read blogs and websites) who wanted to sign-up to their favourites sites.

You can find out more about how they were supposed to work in this video - for as long as it's still available on YouTube:

What happened

Less than four years after the launch, Google announced that Friend Connect would be "retired for all non-blogger sites in March 2012".   Their announcement was light on details about what exactly this meant, but reading various blog posts it seems that:

• The GFC dashboard, where users could manage their profiles was turned off
• The site where website owners could get the code to install the GFG gadget  (and do other things like send newsletter or get statistics) was turned off.
• Blogger users could still add teh GFC gadget to their blogs   (until the widget was removed in ... not sure exactly when, but it's not available now).
• Updates from non-blogger sites were no longer sent through GFC.
• Updates from Blogger sites were still send through GFC, and users could continue to get them through Google Reader (until it was turned off in July 2013) or the Blogger Dashboard.

Google didn't provide give any options for moving GFC user or relationship data into any other tools.

And why?

Overall, my guess is that GFC didn't get enough users - or perhaps it just didn't give Google with enough of a platform for the social features that they wanted.  Possibly this was because:

• The things which Google Friend Connect promised a number of privacy / security questions. I can't put my finger on exactly what worried me - but somehow it just sounds wrong to me..
• People asked "Why would I want to share all my interests with someone just because I read their website? I can maybe understand it for a blog, but not for websites in general."

So why did anyone bother - and why is the GFC Followers gadget still on some blogs.

Obviously there were problems with Google Friend Connect:   Personally, I never quite understood it, despite using Blogger long before GFC was introduced.   Even when I started Blogger-HAT in late 2009, GFC just never stood out as something that was important-enough for me to understand.

But some people did use it - and in particular enough Blogger users that Google decided not to turn it off for Blogger.

I noticed that other people had a GFC gadget on their blogs, so I added one to Blogger-HAT - as much as anything because I use it as a test-site to try out features to see how the might work on my other sites.

Finally today, the penny dropped when I saw this a comment "some people that they used their GFC/Blogger Dashboard in place of something like Google Reader" here while I was researching this article.   What it means is that if you signed up to a blog/sites using the GFC-Follow gadget, then you can use the bottom part of the Blogger dashboard instead of an RSS reader.

Today, readers can still sign up for websites which have the Follow on Google Friend Connect gadget on them, but the gadget cannot be added to any new sites, at least not using Blogger's standard tools for adding a gadget to your blog.

The Blogger-dashboard is still being updated with posts from Blogger-based sites that you've signed up to using GFC.

Lots of people are speculating that sooner or later this will be turned off, but no one knows exactly when that will happen.

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Related Articles:

How to add a gadget to your blog

Where to find the HTML code for popular gadgets

Linking your blog to the social networks

Putting a Facebook Page badge into Blogger

Basic view component Radio Button part -2

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Basic view component Radio Button part -1

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41-Megapixel Nokia Lumia 1020: Everything (we think) we know so far

Which phone has been your favorite so far? Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One or iPhone 5? Certainly these devices are so hot and sell well around the world. It means a lot but it doesn’t mean everything. Now you have a new choice. How about Nokia's new Lumia 1020? Ahead of the formal announcement in New York on Thursday, details are leaking about the Finnish company's latest device for the U.S. market. Nokia Lumia 1020 is getting a lot of attention for its impressive 41 MP camera. Here’s what we know:

1.  Specs
The device will have a 4.5-inch display and quad-core microchip. It features optical image stabilization, an FM radio, near-field communication tech, 2GB of memory and 32GB of non-expandable flash storage, per the previous link. Oh, and wireless charging will be an option.

2.  Color – Yellow, Black and White
According to Windows Phone Central, Nokia Lumia 1020 will come in white, yellow and black colors.

3.  Mobile Name – Lumia 1020
Over the weekend, Microsoft Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore posted on Flickr a series of sample images from different Lumia Windows Phones — two of which were shot with a phone tagged as the "Lumia 1020." So this smartphone will launch as the Nokia Lumia 1020. And it will be a Windows Phone, per this unconfirmed press photo and unconfirmed field photo.

4.  Camera – 41 Megapixels
Its differentiating feature will be a camera. Nokia gave us "41 million reasons to zoom in" a few weeks ago, and the company in February introduced a 41-megapixel camera. That was followed by a Guardian report saying it would be taking that tech to Windows Phone handsets.

Additionally, the Lumia 1020 will use Nokia’s Pureview sensor (also featured on the 920 and 808) to take high quality images in low light situations.  The 1020’s camera is also expected to include sophisticated (if not new) photography options like: Optic Image Stabilization, LED and Xenon flash, a “lossless zoom” feature, and settings for ISO, white balance, manual focus, and shutter speed. Its camera "takes the image in 32MP and 5MP at the same time in 16:9," according to Windows Phone Central, and "shoots 38MP in 4:3."

Rumors have also been circulated that the Lumia 1020 has appeared on AT&T’s inventory list.  This all but confirms that the device will be officially announced and demonstrated this Thursday, and indicates we’ll most likely be able to buy it within the next month.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, funded!

The self described open-source rogue-like survivalcraft / driving game in a sci-fi zombie apocalypse has successfully reached its goal on Kickstarter, and one of the developers will now be able to work on it full-time for a few months to implement for example a back-end for proper graphics.

But see and hear about it yourself:


The first stretch-goal is close too, with 12 days remaining to pledge money towards this cool project.

Less rosy does it look for the previously featured Data Dealer project. With only 48 hours to go, but still about 10k missing it will be a close finish if at all. They got some remarkable press lately though and jumped up about 10k in the last days, so it is still possible. So if you haven't done it yet, pledge here.