Google Friend disConnected

Stephen Withers
Friday, 16 May 2008 04:53

Business IT - Networking

Google's Friend Connect service, announced earlier this week, has suffered a setback. Which big-name social network has withdrawn its support?

Facebook has suspended Friend Connect from accessing Facebook user information because "it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge, which doesn't respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service," explained Facebook's Charlie Cheever in the company's developers blog.

Web sites will be able to easily incorporate Friend Connect to allow users to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorisation APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, LinkedIn and others.

"We’ve reached out to Google several times about this [privacy] issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose," said Cheever.

Exactly how Friend Connect falls short of Facebook's standards was not explained. Some observers are suggesting that the move is intending to thwart Google's progress in the social networking space.

But if you take Cheever's statement at face value, it seems Facebook doesn't have anything in principle against Friend Connect, and that the issue is merely one of implementation.

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