Google races Facebook to simplify its Friend Connect platform
Call it feature envy. Google is simplifying the process for developers to use Friend Connect on their sites, just two days after Facebook essentially did the same for its competing Facebook Connect identity platform.
Instead of uploading files to activate Friend Connect, a developer can now just use their site name and URL.
Both companies are in a race to have their log-ins be a person’s primary identity for destinations across the web. For example, if you use Facebook’s log-in to use a travel site, that benefits the social network as its forms a richer picture of how you use the web, opening the door to more targeted advertising. Plus if you share that activity with friends on Facebook, that might drive more traffic to the travel site and boost engagement in the social network.
It’s the second eerily similar feature both companies have released this week. Within 24 hours after Facebook opened its crowdsourced translations system for others to use, Google launched an upgraded Web site translator gadget supporting 51 languages.
Next Story: Facebook’s Latin support lets you get your lorem ipsum on
Previous Story: CultureLick sings for net neutrality, led by Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg
About the Author, Kim-Mai Cutler
Kim-Mai was born and raised a stone's throw from Apple headquarters in Cupertino by a devout Hewlett-Packard family. After attending UC Berkeley, Kim-Mai worked for Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires in New York, Los Angeles, London and Buenos Aires. Follow her on Twitter at @kimmaicutler, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.