Google-Facebook entice websites to join their social circles

By Glenn Chapman Agence France-Presse SAN FRANCISCO -- Google and Facebook on Thursday launched rival technology plat forms that can be used to infuse websites with trendy social-networking feature s. A Facebook Connect service that was tested for months with selected partners is now available to anyone interested in transforming static websites into intera ctive communities of users. Internet colossus Google picked the same day to unveil a beta, or test, version of Friend Connect software aimed at "any webmaster looking to add a dash of so cial to his or her site." Online communities and user-contributed content are core aspects of the evoluti on of life on the Internet and the superstar California companies are evidently jockeying to be the preferred platform for websites. Facebook Connect lets outside website operators tie into the social- networking website so its more than 130 million users can range the Internet fr om profile pages taking friends and data with them. "Our users come to our sites to consume and engage with content around the topi cs they care about most," said Michael Marquez, executive vice president of str ategy and corporate development at CBS Interactive. "We create active communities around this content, and Facebook Connect makes i t easy for our users to share their opinions, ideas and advice with their entir e social network." "We opened Facebook Platform in 2007 to enable hundreds of thousands of develop ers to create meaningful social experiences for users on Facebook.com," said Fa cebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. "With today's launch of Facebook Connect, we're extending that power to million s of entrepreneurs and developers, transforming the Web into a more social plac e where Facebook's users can engage in trusted social experiences with their fr iends." Google Friend Connect provides website operators with computer codes that add s ocial-networking features such as creating personal profiles, finding users wit h similar tastes, or interacting online with friends. "Friend Connect's goal is to facilitate an open social Web," Google product man ager Mussie Shore wrote in a blog posting. "This service lets webmasters add social features to their sites by simply copy ing and pasting a few snippets of code; no advanced coding or technical backgro und required." Friend Connect lets people log into participating websites using existing Googl e, Yahoo, America Online or OpenID accounts instead of requiring users to set u p new log-in names and passwords. "Friend Connect makes it simple for people to instantly interact with one anoth er on the sites that they already love to visit," Shore wrote. "Additionally, websites that use Friend Connect become OpenSocial containers, c apable of running applications created by the OpenSocial developer community." OpenSocial is a set of computer applications developed by Google, MySpace and o ther Internet firms to serve as a common social-networking platform that breaks down walls between websites. The Facebook platform program is available to developers here.