Google launches Friend Connect with mixed reviews

Google announced last night that it will be launching Friend Connect — a tool that website owners can use to give their site a more social feel. Don’t worry if you have a website but you are not comfortable integrating with advanced APIs, integrating couldn’t be easier.

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.

You can’t use the service yet, as they are still trying to figure out how it’s going to scale, but you might be able to get access if you sign up for the limited preview. Once it is launched, website owners simply have to answer a couple questions that Google uses to generate some HTML — paste it into your website and you’re done. This is an extremely easy way for you to add social features to your website without knowing anything about coding. To see it in action, watch this video.

This simplicity is where some people have a problem with it though. There is no way for you to directly access Friend Connect features without using an iFrame that you don’t have access to. Without complete control over the presentation, the Friend Connect features will no doubt feel out of place on many sites. A real API that savvy website developers can use to hook into the same features would be very welcome.