Have you ever wanted a social network on your site? Maybe you wanted to have a review of your products or a simple way to allow visitors to add comments. Usually you would need some sort of database, and a basic knowledge of programming to get this done. Google has now made it possible for any site to add social content and create a community with the newest addition to the Google family:  Google Friend Connect.

On Dec 4th, Google Friend Connect was released to the “public”, without a waiting list, over at the official Google blog. The benefit of Google Friend Connect is it’s simplicity and  flexibility. Google have integrated OpenID, which means users can log-in with their accounts from AOL, BBC, Google, IBM, Microsoft, MySpace, Orange, VeriSign, Yandex, Ustream and Yahoo!  Following in the vein of ease of use, users can either establish a new profile or use profiles and friend sources from other social networks that are subscribing to the OpenSocial format.

For those that don’t know, OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for web-based social network applications, developed mainly by Google along with MySpace. Applications implementing the OpenSocial APIs are interoperable with any social network system that supports them. This includes sites such as Hi5.com, MySpace, orkut, Netlog, Sonico.com, Friendster, Ning, Yahoo! and now Google Friend Connect.

So what does Google Friend Connect give you? Well, right now, it’s still new so the amount of gadgets are limited to the following:

Members gadget
The Members gadget is an all-in-one gadget. It allows visitors to:
-Join your site
-Sign in and out
-See pictures of other site members
-See pictures of their friends
-Explore other members’ profiles
-Invite other people to join your site
You can put this gadget on your home page and choose the size and colors that fit best for your site.

Sign In gadget
The “Sign In” gadget allows visitors to join your site, sign in and out, and invite people to become members. It doesn’t have all the features of the Members gadget, but it can fit neatly in to a small space.

Wall gadget
Allows viewers to post comments, or links to videos on your site.

Review/Rate gadget
Allows viewers to rate a page, or a section of a page. Viewers can use this to rate videos, articles, books, photos, songs, or anything else you can imagine. You can put multiple Review/Rate gadgets on one page, one for each item you want viewers to review.

If you have the ability, and want to, Google Friend Connect will also allow you the ability to create custom OpenSocial Gadgets for users.

For those that wish to see Google Friend Connect in action, check out the below video:

In conclusion, if you have a basic site, and want to create a community, this is a great (and easy) way to get started. Remember, though, this is a solution on the back of Google. We do not recommend it for a business which wants to have control over the data.  It is also a new entry into this sphere, so there is not enough data to know about adoption rates from the user community. Nevertheless, it is an interesting development you may want to consider in differentiating your online offering.