I was thinking of removing my Wordpress comment areas and replacing them with Google Friend Connect - has anyone used this service? Is it worthwhile? The only thing I'm afraid of is if this becomes another one of those Google services that gets pulled in a year, like several of their other projects...
I have been using it for a about 3 or 4 months, its still in the early stages of development at the moment, but they are gradually adding to it. there does not seem to be too much interest in it because it is relatively unknown. The reason I have been using it, is because it enabled me to add a comment area to an established site that I built in plain html, without the need to switch to a blogging type platform. As for replacing your wordpress comment area, Um, I probably wouldn't do that. The reason I wouldn't is because comments on blogger platforms, AFAIK become part of the content on a site, very relative content I might add. With friend connect, if you view the source code, there are no comments to be seen. So I doubt the robots would associate this extra fresh content with your site. There is a group about it here http://groups.google.com/group/google-friend-connect-discussion-group/topics I don't think Google will pull it unless facebook connect wins over by a big margin, but facebook connect is a lot harder to implement than Friend connect, so facebook may end up getting on board with Google. If Google can integrate friend connect with some of the other free apps like gtalk, piccasa, maps, calendar etc, then friend connect could become an extremely useful app. Cheers James
Agree with tattoos. The blog comments will visible in the source code, and considered more search engine friendly. The Google Friend Connect as I see, is more suitable for those non-blog & non-forum community sites.