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May 27, 2009

Google Friend Connect Adds Global Conversations

Web Elements is Google's new one-stop shop for services that can be embedded into any web page without requiring coding skills. You can embed maps, search results, calendars, news, spreadsheets, presentations, YouTube channels, but all of these features were already available in similar formats.

Friend Connect added an interesting web element for global conversations. "A global conversation is a conversation that takes place on several web site simultaneously. You can tell that you are looking at a global conversation because it says "Global conversation - learn more" underneath the title of the conversation. When you post to a global conversation, such as "mandolins", the post not only shows up on the web site where you posted it, but it also shows up on any site that chooses to embed the conversation, now or in the future."


So you can create an ad-hoc chat room that can be embedded in any web page that will continue the conversation. Friend Connect comes with an authentication system that doesn't require creating a new account, an option to use existing profiles, threaded comments, basic spam filtering, comment translation and other useful features.

5 comments:

  1. I find it a little confusing. I'm sure if I see it in action enough times, I'll understand?

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  2. To bad it can't scale. The Web Element/gadget only has the topic as unique identifier. So now no one else can create a global conversation called "Google Friend Connect". (And it doesn't support unicode characters.)

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  3. @Anonymous said on May 27, 2009 7:05 PM PDT:

    The topic as identifier is the point of the global conversations ...
    Anyone else would simply be joining the same conversation about "Google Friend Connect" - no one owns or controls the conversation ;-)

    Unicode would be a good idea, but why can't it scale?

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  4. All I see there is two 404 error pages. Interesting... so Gmail works ok but it's a beta. This Conversation thing is *not* a beta but doesn't work at all. I don't get it.

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  5. @Anonymous said on May 28, 2009 8:50 AM PDT:

    Friend Connect as a whole is in beta ;-)
    http://www.google.com/friendconnect/static/images/glogo/en/friend_connect_logo.png
    from
    http://www.google.com/friendconnect/discuss/help

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