Google Wants to Friend You

Thanks to a new Google project, soon any Website can be its own Facebook.

Upping the stakes in its ongoing battle with the popular social network, Google announced today that it was getting into the "social plumbing" business — giving every website a way to add a limitless number of applications and a means for those sites' users to communicate among themselves.

The initiative is called Friend Connect and it begins tonight when any site can apply to be in the Google pilot program (they call it a "preview release") here. Note: that site won't be live until Monday night. During the next few days, Google will choose one or two dozen sites to participate. Over the course of the next several months, the company will collect site, user and developer feedback on how the program is working. Then, if all goes well, in a few months Google will open up Friend Connect to any website or blog that wants to participate.

Here's how it'll work. (And forgive me for using my blog as an example; we need the traffic.)

(The rest of my time.com story is here.)

Facebook Wants to Friend You