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Google Inc. today announced new additions to its Friend Connect service, the suite of social sharing tools for websites, developed out of its Cambridge office.
Websites that use Friend Connect can now survey visitors to discover what they’re most interested in, and their answers will customize the site’s content, said Google product manager Mussie Shore. Shore has led development of Friend Connect with Sami Shalabi since Zingku Inc., the company they co-founded together in Waltham, was acquired by Google in 2007.
Unlike many Google roll-outs, the release for Friend Connect comprises a host of capabilities that will be available all at once. Users who install the tools will be able to send custom newsletters based on visitors’ interests, determined by their answers to questions like, “What’s the last concert you attended?” as Shore wrote in a blog post today. Voluntary answers to questions like that will also help determine ads served by Google AdSense and content highlighted in a personalized content gadget on a website.
That shared information is also available to other visitors who sign onto the site as members, using pre-existing user IDs with Google, Yahoo or AOL, Shore said, enabling site visitors to establish connections with one another.
“What’s unique about (Friend Connect) is rather than treating people’s interests as this big, amorphous thing, it allows the site owner to establish meaningful identity within the context of their specific site,” Shore said.
Shore and Simi’s Zingku project focused on applications for social sharing on mobile devices. When they got to Google, they were invited to take a few months to stop and look around at other options, he said.
Google Friend Connect launched for private testing in May of last year and became publicly available in December. According to Google, the service now has 9 million user sites, with 500 million 30-day unique visitors.
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