Google Friend Connect

Google tonight will launch Google Friend Connect, the first major product introduction around the Open Social platform.  Friend Connect will allow websites to integrate social networking capabilities without the need to write code.

The announcement comes on the heels of announcements from MySpace and Facebook that they are enabling more data portability. In other words, visitors to a given website should be able to leverage the relationship data they have stored at any other social networking site.

Data portability will be critical to the future growth of social networks. Anyone who tries to figure out which friends they have on LinkedIn vs. Facebook vs. Plaxo vs. MySpace knows the value of this. And, for Google and its partners, whoever gets out in front on that wave has the chance to be the primary host for that data. It seems that Google has taken a slightly closed approach to openness - rather than a fully open service, they provide code to enable you to open a Google Open Social iFrame.

Will try to post more tonight after the site goes live, but there's lots of good coverage already from  Forrester's Charlene Li, TechCrunch, Dan Farber at CNET, Read/Write/Web and Mashable, among others.

The URL (not yet working) for Friend Connect will be live tonight.