Google Friend Connect brings social media to any website

If you own a website, you’ll be able to turn it into a social network soon, thanks to Google Friend Connect.

By adding a snippet of code to your site, you’ll be able to get social features up and running immediately without programming. Pick and choose from user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.

 Google says GoogleFriend Connect has three big advantages:

• It will drive traffic. People who discover interesting sites can bring their friends with them, and can opt-in to publish their activities on those sites back into their social network, attracting even more visitors.
• Increase engagement: access to friends and OpenSocial applications provides more interesting content and richer social experiences.
• It will require less work because you won’t need a programmer, just the coding. 

I particularly like the fact that this will allow website owners to invite visitors to review things like products and free articles.  Studies show that product reviews bring more credibility to a website and encourage visitors to buy.