Google had been experimenting with this “bringing readers/visitors together” sort of service, and had finally launched what they call Google Friend Connect 2 days ago. Unlike MyBlogLog, most activities are done using the gadget embedded on blogs or websites instead of having a functional website.

A webmaster or blogger can add their website to Google Friend Connect and setup a members gadget. What do the gadget do? A visitor can join your website community via the gadget, using existing Google account, Yahoo! account, AIM account or OpenID account.

Next? They can add each other as friends, view profiles of other members—which consist of their avatar, link and small about me snippet.As far as I’m concerned, there is no way to send message to other members or any other form of interaction.

You can also add other gadgets, such as the wall gadget, which allows viewers to post comments, or links to videos on your site. Works like a chat box in my opinion.

At the time being, there is really nothing much to do with Google Friend Connect. MyBlogLog has whatever Google Friend Connect has, but Google Friend Connect has just part of what MyBlogLog is having—except for other gadgets that serve little to no purpose.

Google can do so much more to make it more convincing for webmasters to consider using Google Friend Connect. What is the point letting members to join the community, and you know who are the members, add them as friends if you wish, and do nothing else? Not even sending them messages? That doesn’t make sense.

Might as well change the product name to “Google Know Your Community Members” instead. Well, it’s still in beta so it might be too early to judge.

I have setup a Google Friend Connect gadget for SheepTech, which can be found at the sidebar. Play around with it and let me know what you think.

©2011 SheepTech

Google Friend Connect Launched

The good of Blogicon is there is no need to register any accounts, just upload an image of 80×80 with the name blogicon.gif in your root directory (yourdomain.com/blogicon.gif) and it will be displayed everytime you comment on participating blogs.

The bad is no one is managing the system. For MyBlogLog, there is a team behind it moderating. If someone uploads an adult image as his Blogicon and he comments on participating blogs, it will be displayed—and that will do nothing good to the blog. Since the format is in gif, it can even be a moving avatar.

As we are required to upload an image to our host first before we can have our avatar being displayed, it is quite unfair to bloggers who are using Blogger or WordPress.com. As far as I know, it is not possible to upload an image to the root directory of a free hosted blogs.

Furthermore, MyBlogLog has had already a very large user base, resulting in less people wanting to install the Blogicon plugin on their blogs—but MyBlogLog’s plugin. MyBlogLog also make it 100% sure the author of the comment matches the avatar. Blogicon is retrieving avatars based on the URL the comment author enter. Meaning if I enter someone else’s blog URL while commenting, your avatar will be shown instead.

What do you think?

©2011 SheepTech

Can Blogicon Replace Existing Blog Avatar?