Alex Reid

Facebook is citing privacy concerns in a blog post about blocking Google’s Friend Connect.

Friend Connect is essentially a way to auto-generate code to insert “gagdets” (think “widgets”) as well as third party includes. An include might have been, until now, your Facebook friend list or iLike music list in a box on the side of your web site. The idea is to “socially enable” web sites; that is, to integrate social networking aspects with an individual’s web sites.

The more obvious problem is that so far in this new Google roll-out is that it only integrates two small-namers Hi5 and Plaxo, as well as Orkut which Google owns, along with it’s own Google Talk and Facebook, via its own web site. Google would have you believe it’s ‘making social networks social’, but it’s hardly tapping the wide range of social networking sites out there.

The real problem however is that Facebook was working on the exact same thing, only to announce it three days later; Facebook Connect. Facebook’s incarnation of the same name was to integrate only Facebook and Digg (which is far bigger than Google’s choices, combined) into individual’s web sites.

The bigger issue here is that Facebook is being careful with Google as it gears up to compete with them as it’s becoming apparent Google is missing the social networking aspect to their empire.

But yes, it’s “privacy concerns”.