Textmode

Two interesting tools to play around with, released almost at the same time:

Google Friend Connect

Google Friend Connect let’s webmasters add a social layer to their site – without any programming effort. The only thing you have to do is include the functionality in your markup.

Based on widgets it enables visitors to “sign up” for sites using Friend Connect, using a variety of authentication mechanisms:

• Google
• Yahoo
• AIM
• OpenID

Once signed up, you get the full functionality of Google Friend Connect.

This includes:

• Interaction with other visitors (making friends, shoutbox)
• Interaction on the site (sharing media, posting comments, playing games, etc)
• Invite Contacts to join the site too

An example (featured by Google) is billboardforthepeople.com

Google Friend Connect is a very general approach, trying to cover a wide area. Users can interact without really being in an existing social network (like Facebook, etc).

The only thing I missed when looking at Friend Connect for the first time, is a list or gallery of the available widgets. Please drop a comment if you know if something like this exists.

Facebook Connect

Facebook Connect on the other side, enables developers to integrate the Facebook functionality into other sites.

The main features here are:

• Trusted authentication (using facebook user credentials)
• Real identity (integrate visitors facebook identities into your site)
• Friend linking (let visitors find facebook friends on your site)
• Dynamic privacy (include visitor information and privacy settings)
• Social distribution (allow visitors to share information and actions)

As you can see Facebook Connect is a bit more specific, the orientation here is towards developers that want to integrate Facebook functionalty. I think this is a great tool, not only in combination with existing Facebook applications.

therunaround is an example they provide.