Facebook Connect vs Google Friend Connect – Google wins for simplicity

So I started doing some research on the integration of social options for you loyal readers of my blog and I was presented with two salient choices. Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect.

Obviously, I looked at Facebook Connect first since I spend so much time on Facebook. Most all articles were unanimous in saying that if you can actually get through the setup, Facebook Connect is beautiful and seamless… BUT… (that’s an enormous BUT *giggle*) it’s geared toward developers and code junkies.

Here are some of the articles I read, if you are interested:

Facebook Connect vs Google Friend Connect: Fight! December 5th, 2008 | by Stan Schroeder

Google Friend Connect vs Facebook Connect video

Easy Does It: Google Friend Connect One-Ups Facebook Connect’s Install Wizard by Jason Kincaid on October 2, 2009

So, I’m not going to shy away from a challenge, but I started looking more closely at Google Friend Connect to see what they had to offer. Here we have a situation typical of Google… just push the big red easy button, as Jason Kincaid eluded to. Okay… it wasn’t quite THAT easy. But within five minutes I had my Google Friend Connect box implemented and tested on my blog.

To get started I went to http://www.google.com/friendconnect and clicked on the big blue Get Started button.

From there, I entered in the required information and followed the instructions to create the html code for my site. Once that was completed, I was ready to insert the code into my blog.

This presented somewhat of a glitch, as I’m using a different theme than the default (shocking I know) so I didn’t want to do anything that was going to break the theme code. Conveniently, I came across this blog that explained the easiest way to achieve my goal was to simply create a new text widget and then place the widget wherever I wanted my Google Friend Connect box to appear. Thank you to Don Campbell for providing that helpful hint!

Success! =)

Now after all that, please feel free to join my blog community by using this nifty Google friend connect widget! =)

If you prefer to wait for Facebook connect, that’s okay also. I’ll be adding that soon. Personally right now, I figure options are always good.

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