“Ok” I am convinced NOT to add the google feature to my site. Thanks for taking a look and sharing your point of view.
Not sure what you mean by… “Clicking on your icon I see that you have Activities and have joined a single site. Not bad info to give out…”
I hope that I am not your most lame client….
You are not my most lame client. You inspire me to write =)
Actually, I was rather embarrassed that you found a cool Google feature that I did not know about!!!
However, looking at the Google Friends Connect functionality, it does not look like it is geared toward increasing your professional reach. Instead, it looks like it is a way to show how “cool” you are because you have so many people following you. While this may, in fact, be a neat marketing plug, having 50 folks following you is not going to impress me. Having 20,000 will. How long will that take? And do you REALLY want 20,000 friends 😉
I have 82 friends on Facebook and it makes my skin crawl :{ I avoid loging in because someone is always saying something that I really “should” read (if I do not want to insult them). I can not imagine doing this for a business site. If my blog had 82 people following me, I do not think that would be an impressive number (not when YVOD hosts 300+ websites and consults with well over 300+ additional folks).
In short: “feeds” are supposed to make it easier for folks to get information from your site. Feedburner sends an email to everyone who is subscribed so they do not need to “visit” your site to get your latest posts. I imagine Google Friends Connect does the same thing (especially since the own Feedburner now). That being said, Feedburner shows up on your site as a single field with a “Subscribe” button next to it. Google Friends… well, it sure makes Google stand out.
PS: If you click around on your friends site, each one of the Google Friends Connect has an icon. Find yours and click on it. You will see a bit of info about you. Do you want that given out on your friends site? Not sure. But more importantly, does your >>FRIEND<< want that info given? What if your friend helps Democrats get elected but you are a Republican lobbyist? Does your friend really want that info on his site? Does he want to be known as palling around with the opposition? What if you are his only friend? You could imagine how the trust between him and his clients could be broken. Maybe he is just a front for the Republicans... My only point is, Google is in charge of what info gets on your site. That is, in my opine, never a good thing. Sometimes it is worth it (if you are raking in ad revenue), but try not to give someone else total rights over any part of your website.