Image by Abdallah ♫ via Flickr

I don’t understand how Facebook’s new Friend Connect is substantively different from their pre-platform API functionality. External Web sites already have the ability to allow users to sign in to Facebook and retrieve their friends and profile from an external site. Friend connect just appears to be some better UI controls for doing this withouth having to jump off to Facebook and approve the 3rd party app. What am I missing?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Steve Rubel had an interesting post today about where you should invest your time “contributing” online.

Micro Persuasion: Should You Rent or Buy Social Real Estate?

“Renting” in this context means participating in discussion on someone else’s site (like Twitter). “Owning” means collecting content on your own domain (or blog). From the post:

It seems to me like “renting” online equity is now what’s in vogue. Long-form blogging is less prevalent because the competition for attention from pro-bloggers is steep. That’s why I love the Friendfeed model. It’s like a co-op. I can invest in my blog and realize benefits not only here but also on Friendfeed. Or, I can invest in Twitter and see the same return on Friendfeed, though certain provisions apply. You’re still beholden to the landlord.

I think MyBlogLog had the potential to be a better example than FriendFeed. I’m still enamoured with the idea, and am eagerly awating Google’s Friend Connect.

Image via Wikipedia

The race between OpenSocial and the Facebook Platform is hard to call. Facebook has better technology, and a growing user base – but OpenSocial has the support of MySpace and LinkedIn.

A few weeks back, Google announced Friend Connect, and I don’t think it got the coverage it deserved. Maybe I was just on vacation. I think Friend Connect more than anything else gives OpenSocial a leg up. Friend Connect will let you turn any Web site into an OpenSocial Web site by adding some javascript. Facebook’s relase of fbOpen serves the same purpose, but will never be adopted as widely.

I was a big fan of MyBlogLog (the idea and virality at least, if not the implementation). I think Friend Connect is going to be what puts OpenSocial over the top. As if Google hadn’t taken over my life enough already.