When Prose of a Pol switched over to the Thesis Theme, I also added a Google Friend Connect widget to the sidebar so that my readers can join my community. Obviously, I knew about Google Friend Connect but didn’t really give it much thought until I saw it on a few of my favorite bloggers sites. That and I noticed Google is starting to roll out some really cool features for it that I’ll be looking to implement down the road.
One of the tricky parts about Google Friend Connect is finding other blogs with Google Friend Connect installed. Sure, there’s a Google Friend Connect Directory but it’s a bit sparse at the moment. So, I wanted to share with you seven eight great bloggers who have the Google Friend Connect community widget installed. Check them out and join their community. They’re all very solid reads. While you’re at it, scroll down and join my Google Friend Connect community in the right sidebar. All you need is a Google account. Over time, as I add some Google Friend Connect features (recommendations looks interesting) you’ll already be setup to use them.
Before we dive into the list, let me point out a great resource for finding out more about Google Friend Connect that one of my commenters pointed me to. It’s written by Chris Lang (who also appears on the below list) and is a very well put together guide to installing and utilizing Google Friend Connect.
Bloggers with Google Friend Connect
- Stuart Foster – The Lost Jacket
- Justin Wright – Life of Justin
- Marko Saric – How to Make My Blog
- Jim Gaudet – SEO and Web Design by Jim Gaudet
- Mike Volpe – Marketing with Mike
- Jason Falls – Social Media Explorer
- Robert Scoble – Scobleizer
- Chris Lang – Google Friend Connect Tactics
- Jack Humphrey – Friday Traffic Report
- Coree Silvera – Market Like a Chick
Stuart blogs about the social media trends, techniques, and best practices at The Lost Jacket. Not only is it an informative read, it’s often quite hysterical too.
Justin is a digital nomad and member of The 42nd Estate. He writes about blogging, traveling, technology and the digital nomad lifestyle at Life of Justin.
Marko delivers tons of great tips about how to style your blog, write great content, and promote it effectively. For anyone with the Thesis theme, How to Make My Blog is a must read as he delivers tons of great tips on how to customize Thesis. Marko just recently added Google Friend Connect and gave me the scoop that he’ll be writing a post about his implementation of it soon.
Jim is an IT guy living the good life as an expatriate in Costa Rica. He blogs about SEO, web design, his adventures on the beach and random cool stuff he finds online at SEO and Web Design by Jim Gaudet.
Mike is a Vice President of Marketing at HubSpot, an inbound marketing firm. He writes about inbound marketing (shocking, eh), social media, conferences, SEO, and other good info at Marketing with Mike.
Jason is the Director of Social Media at Doe Anderson and an all around knowledgeable dude. He pumps out great content on marketing and branding in the social media age. It’s a real solid read and he usually goes into a good amount of depth on each topic. The 500 words or less post is a bit of a rarity at Social Media Explorer (that’s not a bad thing when the content rocks).
Skipped over the Scoble the first run with this post, but as Chris noted in the comments, Robert has been using Google Friend Connect on his blog since his new design. Scoble blogs about the social web and hypothesizes about where it will all lead. Scobleizer is a great read for anyone who wants to read about how Web 3.0 or the 2010 Web will look and feel like.
Chris’ blog is one I just discovered via his comment below on my blog. Google Friend Connect Tactics is a perfect addition to this list as Chris writes about using GFC, new features, and other Google and social news.
Jack is a late addition to this list but is another great blogger with Google Friend Connect enabled. He writes about blog marketing strategies, including SEO, link building, and social media at Friday Traffic Report. Note, the Google toolbar only came up for me when I visited his individual posts, not his homepage. So if you don’t see it immediately click through to a post.
Coree comes from a sales and marketing background and over time migrated into network and internet marketing. She writes about marketing (of course!), social networks, and female bloggers and entrepreneurs at Market Like a Chick.
Do you have a blog with Google Friend Connect enabled? If so, share it below in the comments so we can check it out and connect!
First, thanks for mention! That’s great. What a good idea for a post. Not too many people are using FC (even number 7 on your list, I added her to my RSS and evetrything, but could not find FC on her site)
I am really trying to use Friendfeed more. The conversations are great over there, but it’s not that big. I am working on a FF post, maybe something like this..
Hmmm, that’s odd about Coree’s blog not using FC, especially since I’m following it via FC! She must’ve taken it down. Time to edit the post…
[...] Connect with Google Friend Bloggers Share and [...]
Great post and certainly a timely one with Google Wave now showing us where and how Google Friend Connect is going to tie all the pieces of GFC together.
My Blog: Googling Social – Google Friend Connect Tactics, is there for you all. Documenting the latest additions to GFC, helping you use them to your advantage and please ask help from my self and others to get your installs working on your Blogs and Blogger.
Fell free to ask for my help you need there and if we can’t answer your questions we will find someone who will.
Chris Lang
Thanks Chris, you’re right about the timing. I’m really looking forward to Google Wave. From everything I’ve seen it could be a game changer (or game easer). Like your site, going to edit it into this post. Great resource for us GFC users!
Also the top blogger on the web, Robert Scoble just added GFC to his blog on http://www.scobleizer.com and the conversation over there about GFC was awesome.
Even Mussie Shore, product manger for Google Friend Connect chimed in.
Nice, get the Freindfeed by Robert Scoble too, he is super active..
Looking forward to your FriendFeed post Jim. I’ve got a good amount of people in mine who I pulled in via Twitter and who have found my FF via this blog. Scoble is great on FF.
Appreciate the mention Adam
. I find that Google Friend Connect is a really cool addition to my site…not for what it is now but what it might become later.
No problem Stuart, you deserve it! You’re right that GFC has immense potential. Really looking forward to seeing what they do with it going forward, especially now that great “how to” bloggers like Marko are connecting (and will show us some neat tricks and tools, hopefully).
I linked my Google Profile above so you can see what one looks like. This is key, without that Google Friend Connect additions in GFC gadgets mean little because all you get is the fact that the person (you) joined.
When you set up a Google profile then you can see what the person, a real person is about, what sites they own and what Google properties like YouTube they create content on.
You may also want to take a look at my Google Friend Connect Knol.
http://knol.google.com/k/chris-lang/google-friend-connect/1m8w0yimfpnl3/1
It blows the Wikipedia version away and is my attempt to put all the Google Friend Connect resources in one place.
Also the Google Wave Mashable post is darn good too, I will have a complete compilation of all the resources for this up tomorrow on my site but for now you can see where Google is going with this whole thing.
http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/
Unfortunately I was not at the I/O conference so I do not have access to the developer version as yet and that is where the real information is at.
This is the glue that will bring all the pieces of Google Friend Connect and Google itself, all 50 properties into one place, not like a Twitter page, but like a conversation, much like Friend Feed is trying to do.
Thanks for your inclusion here and I will be directing a few of my contacts to post here as well. And yes many have pulled GFC because they have no idea what it already does. I am not ready to reveal all that yet but most of it is available in my members site.
Of course if you have any questions on GFC I will be glad to help you on my site but to continue this thread feel free to ask for help here.
Cheers! Chris Lang
Wow Chris, thank you for this awesome source of information about Google Friend Connect. What a comment!
I do have a Google Profile:
http://www.google.com/profiles/AdamZPieniazek
And thought it was synced with my Google Friend Connect, is it not (and how would I check), is it that just for general reference?
Your knol resource is fantastic, I’m adding a link to it into my post.
You may have seen it already, but Marko Saric did a write-up of Google Wave and its impact on web workers.
And completely agree with you Chris, Google Wave seems to do everything FriendFeed was trying to do but much better and more integrated. It’ll literally become a one stop shop for all our web media needs. If it works the way it seems, it’s going to be more than a game changer, it’s going to be a web changer. Web 3.0 here we come!
Oh, and I appreciate the shout-outs to your contacts. Thank you!
One last thing, the way I found your site was filtering a Google Friend Connect search in Google Websearch to the most recent posts. That put you at number one and here we are. Google real time is coming and what is going to change even blows me away.
To see the filtering options and how I found this post just search “google friend connect” and then click the show options link at the top left of the SERPS page.
Whoa, very cool Chris. Not sure how I missed the show options button before but that is going to prove to be an amazing resource for finding recent articles. Wonder if they’ll begin integrating real time results into their main search page, perhaps in a sidebar?
I know they already show recent blog posts about select topics at the bottom.
Just relaunched on blogger, going to add more fresh content.
It’s nice to be in on something that’s going to be big but that has yet to be discovered and understood by the masses, no?
I’m one of the few – add me to the list!
@Jack, imagine running into you here. DeJa Vous?
Added Jack! Sorry for the delay. By the way, it looks like your Google toolbar doesn’t show up on the homepage for Friday Traffic Report. Is that on purpose? I’m on Mac OS X – Safari 3.2.1. On Firefox 3 it doesn’t appear at all…quite odd.
And yes, it does feel nice to be ahead of the “wave” (pun intended).
Great site, btw, just added you to my feed reader.
Adam, you should have got some traffic off this, tweeted to our 18K list a few times. MargieDee is my assistant.
Cheers! – Chris Lang
Did get a nice boost, especially from stumbleupon (love that place). Thanks Chris!
Found you thru Stumbleupon. I know a few of the main bloggers on the internet. Great stuff. I will twit your site for you . sneakerme on Twitter . The visionmaker, builder of small empires.lol
Very cool Randy. Thanks!
I really haven’t paid that much attention to Google Friend Connect until now reading this post. I’m thinking of adding it to my blogs now!
You for sure should Carla. It’s going to be integrated into Google Wave, which is going to be huge! Let me know when you’ve got GFC up and running on your site so I can add you to the list!
Thanks for this list Adam, great idea, I have added Friend Connect on my blog and I’m going to head over and add myself to some more of the sites in your list. I’m already connected to Chris Lang and Jack Humphrey
Take care,
Carol
Glad you enjoyed it Carol! I’m off to check out your site now.
Thanks for the mention! I just added it after I saw you integrated it. Seems like an awesome feature and so far I am really liking it. Looking forward to Wave and seeing what it will do to the web…
Wave really does sound like a game changer. Can’t wait to try it out. The mass of tools and integration might actually make it a good web OS, which is something we’ve been hearing about for years now.
@Justin, @Adam, wanted to advise a word of caution concerning this statement…….
>> Looking forward to Wave and seeing what it will do to the web…
Don’t get to head up about this, I about drove me crazy last year waiting for Google Friend Connect to be released. I have a membership site based totally around GFC and I could not sell a thing while I waited for the release.
Google’s development cycle is VERY slow, cautious and professional. Don’t expect to see anything before Christmas.
I missed the I/O conference and hence now they won’t grant me developer access. I can’t even run any of my coding against the API because I don’t have a Wave dev account.
So now we all sit back and wait, till Google decides to let us in a few at a time. Best not to let just any Yahoo on their dev servers I aggree.
But how do you miss something like this just because I was too busy with my own business to pay, fly, book lodgings and take an entire week off from my business just to hope it is worth my time and Google releases something in my market?
As the #1 proponent of Google Friend Connect out side of Google I somehow feel a little left out.
I would like to point out some errors in the information flying around about GFC.
Chris Lang is making allot of noise about GFC being tied into GMail and this is currently NOT the case.
If you become a friend through Friend Connect they are NOT added to your GMail contacts.
There is more but that’s the biggest misconception that’s floating around at the moment.
I’m @notinbed on Twitter if you’d like to know more.
You are not AUTO friends, but only one click away from being friends.
Hah! that’s funny, Mr. faceless nameless. Why not step into the spotlight and show yourself? You seem to use my name freely, I feel somewhat at a disadvantage.
In the mean time I agree with you. In fact I did a piece about it two weeks ago, because yes, at times this feature does not work. We have all heard this before. Here’s why…..
http://www.googlingsocial.com/?p=285
Lot’s of documentation there, but like I said, none of us work for Google, so all we can do is observe and report.
Truly yours,
Chris Lang
Hey Adam…thanks for the mention! Google Connect is still up on my blog…not sure if there were issues loading or what, but it’s there!
Funny, when I added it I had no idea that it would really have an impact but after reading your post and the comments I can see I need to start utilizing and learning more. You always have great info to share. Thank you again!! Let me know if you are still not able to see the GFC widget.
Hmmm, that’s odd Coree, I do see it now and saw it when I wrote the post but didn’t see it in between. Very odd. Anyhoo, took out the edit from the post. Keep up the good work!
Ah, now I am connected…
Something is definitely going on at Google Friend Connect. Today not one avatar from my friends list in Gmail would load and I have not pulled any new contacts from friend requests.
So, to all of you who have pointed out that you are not getting any either, I say thanks so I could look deeper into this.
The features come and go, and there is no documentation that this truly occurs, only my track record on seeing this in the last year.
Of course this is the one thing that I did not screen capture so it figures. I will get some exact data on this soon, but for now all I can say is that is has come and gone many times since May 12th, 2008. We shall see….
Remember that this is only a six month old beta release. If I am wrong in any way and have exact data I will be the first one to let you all know.
I am not afraid of being wrong, I am afraid of seeming to mislead anyone. I would rather be proved wrong on this than send anyone down a road that hurts their business in any way.
Also think about this: Hundreds of new developers from the Google I/O conference are hitting the brand new APIs of Google Wave and the heretofore unused dev servers.
Google will lock down features that we have seen and expect when new code is being brought to release level. I feel they do this so that if there is some big code endless loop error, everyone’s privacy is protected.
Think of what would happen if some new code caused an endless loop that made us all GFC mutual friends and all of a sudden everybody got the others Gmail address in their contacts. We are talking at least on million users.
Would anyone ever trust Google again? Plus Google Wave is directly connected to our friends lists and relationships in GFC. This feature could be shut down until a Google Wave first release comes out.
I do let people know that they can send me an email, Gchat request or Google Latitude request and that will definitely make us mutual friends and that has been public and known for the last year. Just obfuscate your email link chrislang a t Gmial * con and so far spammers are not running bots that go that deep into text strings. Besides Google knows spam and knows how to beat it.
Hope this all helps you feel more confident in GFC and the information that is going around. I don’t worry about friends lists that highly, but everyone seems concerned so this is an attempt to set any record straight.
BigChief SEOless of the Whitehat clan:
Chris Lang
Chris, first, thanks for coming back and clarifying the current situation. Really value your perspective on GFC.
It would make sense for the Add Friend feature to pull contact info into gmail automatically. It would make my life easier too. Perhaps setting it as an option would help Google combat privacy concerns, but seems that would sort of defeat some of the purpose of GFC (making connecting easier).
If Google Wave is going to be a central spot for our social media, then the Add Friend feature needs to have a purpose and automatically pulling in contact info would be awesome. The main criticism against every new social site is we have to yet again fill in more profile info and re-connect with people. If we could get set up on GFC and also use it as a way to find our friends elsewhere then it has huge potential to take off and streamline everyone’s digital social lives.
Thanks again for giving us updates. If anything changes from your perspective, let us know.
Adam, I think I have it figured out, the lack of default Gmail additions. There is no “Yes, I want to share my Gmail address” in your account settings.
Lately I have been getting a flood of Gchat requests. I am starting to theorize that this is the new Google Friend Connect mutual friends request. I mean allot….
Google is huge on testing, so before they release documentation, they will test it to death. Better than what Digg and Facebook has been doing lately, rushing apps to production and then paying the price when they backfire.
So we will be testing this and have some live video on what I believe is the new version of this. Oddly enough it has just started just a Google Wave was released to dev guys.
I’m a newb to Internet Marketing and I subscribe to http://www.blogsuccess.com. Jack mentioned Chris Lang and Chris Lang mentioned Google Friend Connect so i’m doing it, enough said.