Friend Connect getting people closer together

Friend Connect

Still in beta, Google’s Friend Connect service is now offering websites more possibilities to have their visitors get to know each other better and have a more personalized experience when surfing site pages.

For starters Friend Connect is providing webmasters with an ‘Interests’ section where they can make up polls and add questions for those who join their sites. The details surfaced via these methods can then be added to the visitors’ public profiles to be seen by others which may share similar interests. Another addition is the ability to send private messages, which should also help people make more connections easier.

As for the personalization updates made to Friend Connect, these include:

- The new “Newsletter” section lets you create, send and manage newsletters. And with the help of “Interests,” you can either send out newsletters to all your subscribers, or send out custom newsletters to different segments of your subscribers, based on the interest responses they submit.
- A personalized content gadget which automatically presents a dynamic personalized set of links to your site’s content that matches each visitor’s specific interests. Is a visitor learning how to play swing music? Links to articles your site has published about playing swing are presented to him or her.
- Google ads: For those of you who display ads on your website, your Friend Connect account now includes an “AdSense” section that lets you enable Google ad units that are matched both to your site’s content and to the interests users publicly share on your website.

For more info about Friend Connect and what it can bring to your website see the service’s web page.

Tags: Google friend connect