Blogger follow gadget upgrade

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Being an early fan and adopter of Google Friend Connect, on Blogger I was miffed that when going from using a "follow" gadget to Friend Connect, that the "followers" didn't come over automatically.

The Blogger / Google team seem to be working on this though, with the announcement today that the the "followers" gadget which is already used by millions of blogs now functions much like Friend connect.

Unfortunately we'll have to wait a while until those old "followers" show up in any new members gadgets, but responses from the GFC team to comments indicate they are working on integrating old followers into Friend Connect.

This should really ramp up the take up of Friend connect across the wider web too, as it increases the pool of "real people" who are, or will be shortly, familiar with the sign up process and gadgets.

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Transparency added to Google Friend Connect

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Just a quickie...
Some people have moaned before how they have found it difficult to style Friend Connect gadgets to fit in with their page.

Well they now support transparency, so it'll be much easier to make things site better with the page.

For those of you who already have gadgets on your page you can change this without having the generate new code. Just replace the offending color code with "transparent" (without the quotes).

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Here's to making the web more open and social

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Bolocks!! I shouted! ...
If you've watched that video showing how to add Facebook Connect commenting, you will have heard, but may have missed them saying, quote:

.. "Here's to making the web more open and social"

Marketing talk always gets my goat, and the intentional splicing of the words "open" and "social" together, where it really doesn't apply, does nothing to soften my distrust of Facebook.

Doesn't anybody see that Facebook Connect isn't about "making the web more open and social".
What it IS about, is making Facebook more important to it's users.

Facebook Connect is about a relationship between Facebook and the site using Connect. They allow your data to travel backwards and forwards between Facebook and the site.
That is two endpoints along a line. One being the site with Facebook connect, the other being Facebook.

Remember what the campfire catchphrase was at open socials conception?

..."Make the whole web social."

I've tried tio illustrate the differences.
It's actually weighed very much in Facebooks favour: the "whole web" looks nothing like that. If anyone has some facts about size it would be interesting to mash them into one of those "if this melon was the sun..." kind of models.

Of course Friend Connects penitration is still tiny. The big sites are too stupid to see the long tail, and like throwing money away doing things twice: if nothing it helps keep IT people in work.

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Friend Connect canvas fixed on Blogger

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Good News!
Until now people have had a "Blank Canvas"when using Google friend Connect on Blogger.

The canvas.html file is one of two files web site owners need to upload to their domain for GFC to work.
On Blogger the files are there for you, as you can't transfer the files there yourself.
So it was particularly irritating that the canvas file didn't work!

That has no been fixed!

To make the most of this I made people's icons in the "recently signed in" gadget also link to the canvas.

Bad News!
I was hoping that the fix / upgrade also meant that you could style the canvas to match your layout, but that was a bridge too far for this upgrade.

When / if this happens it will logically be a setting you can get at through a "your canvas style" link under layout in your Blogger back-end, rather than anything to do with the "skin" option in the GFC advanced settings option as pictured.
That seems only to be about "skinning" the main "Join" button to the Blogger preferred "Follow" where it appears in the member or small login gadgets. Apart from "user familiarity", the importance of which can never be underestimated, I don't know why they didn't make the custom sign-in-prompt the text for that button anyway?

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Using Google Friend Connect comments on Blogger

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With the release of the "Social Bar" a couple of days ago one of my biggest gripes about Friend connect was (mostly) sorted.
My gripe was that site owners needed to be able to see / show an "overview" of site-wide activity.
Instead of releasing a seperate gadget, aware of the fact that most site owners don't like giving up "turf", they combined this need with the login, comment and member gadget in one.
Hey Presto! The Social Bar...

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Google social bar

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I will enjoy the techies having to eat their hats about Friend Connect.

How could they have been so BLIND!!!!

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Add a welcome message to Google Friend Connect

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Adding a welcome message for your Google friend connect community is easy.
Just click the "advanced" tab in site settings (at http://www.google.com/friendconnect/), then add a welcome message for people who register on your site!

You can use some html, though it isn't clear to me yet what.
You will be safe with links ( link text ) and full URLs convert to links automatically, so there is no excuse for leaving newly registered members confused!

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Google Friend Connect hand holding

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One thing has become clear to me over the past weeks..
Most people (this includes all you "tech savey") are too stupid to understand what Google Friend Connect is, what it is for and how it will change the world.

Hear are some examples of stupidity.

1. Just the members gadget on the site.

Oooo thank you! you let me show my icon (and profile on your page/site).
I'm going to pick on mashable.com mostly: why?
Quote from their about page..
"Founded in July 2005, Mashable is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Networking news. ..."
They should know better!
As of writing this they have just the GFC members gadget installed, showing 9305 members.

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Google Latitude

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Mmmm interesting.

Or at least it would be if I had any friends.

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