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Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Microblogging

Now that the new Lists feature has rolled out to everyone and become a big part of Twitter, the microblogging service has taken the logical next step and launched list widgets. That means you can embed a live version of your favorite Twitter list anywhere on the web. It doesn't even have to be your list, actually: if someone else has a favorite that you enjoy, you can make a widget of that, too.

Like the List-to-RSS solution I wrote about recently, list widgets allow you to follow a list without following everyone on it. Widgets also make it very easy to customize the appearance of your lists, as well as a bunch of other options. Live auto-updating is included - or you can set how often it loads new tweets - and you can also control the number of tweets that appear at once. Don't want to show avatars or hashtags? That's fine too, there are some checkboxes that will take care of it. This set of features makes widgets a great way to share your favorite Twitter content outside of Twitter.

[via TechCrunch]

More Twitter List goodies: official list widgets! originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Twitter - Download Squad - Social Software - RSS - Web service
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Launched in May 2008, amidst Google’s Open Social drive, Google Friend Connect’s primary focus is to simplify adding social elements to any website. By installing Google Friend Connect, site owners can add social networking like features to their sites in a matter of minutes without any programming know how.

Using a blend of open standards, Friend Connect offers social applications and content from Hi5, Orkut, Plaxo, MySpace, Google Talk, Netlog and other social networks neatly packages into simple to install social site plugins.

While Friend Connect has been recently been drowned by the interest in Google Wave, the elevent person team based in Cambridge Massachusetts have continued to push out updates. In an interview with project lead Sami Shalabi, he is quoted as saying the product has reached over 8 million monthly users (that’s websites) a month and “hundreds of millions of web pages”.

These efforts include deep integration with WordPress blogs allowing visitors authenticate using any OpenID account, including Google, Yahoo, or AIM and then comment on posts without having to register.

In April, Google also enabled Friend Connect by default on Blogger, immediately making the world’s seventh largest site social.

Friend Connect is now localized into 56+ languages and with an API recently released too, any passionate developer can add features to the product.

Google Friend Connect appears to be the belt that holds Google’s various social web efforts together. Efforts that include Google Reader sharing, Social Search and Google Profiles to name a few. Many expect all to tie in neatly with Friend Connect creating a surmountable competitor to Facebook’s social crown.

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At yesterday’s Facebook Developer Garage, Facebook outlined a number of the upcoming changes to the Facebook Platform which we are still in the process of digesting, however one major thing stood out to us: the Open Graph API. Why Facebook chose to share this tidbit is a little bit curious, as it appears to be a shot at smoothing over some of the broader changes at hand. Whatever the impact of Facebook’s changes on developers are, the Open Graph API is part of a broader movement by Facebook.

What Is The Open Graph API?

At the beginning of July we highlighted the concept of the Community Platform API, or a way to embed Facebook Pages anywhere on the web. Yesterday, we found out what Facebook was officially calling the product: the Open Graph API. According to Facebook, “The Open Graph API will allow any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page - users will be able to become a Fan of the page, it will show up on that user’s profile and in search results, and that page will be able to publish stories to the stream of its fans.”

While the service won’t be rolled out for at least another 6 months, it illustrates how Facebook is looking to become an identity aggregator for its users. As I previously wrote, the service would most likely be used as an abstract community platform. With the flexibility provided by the open web, developers will have more control over how users navigate through their community.

The Open Graph API is also a step toward making the web more social. As Charlene Li once said, we won’t have to think about social networks as destinations eventually as everything will simply be a social experience. Facebook hopes that all those social experiences point back to one location: Facebook. Right now the concept of the Open Graph API is a big one as well as a vague one as we still have no idea how it will be implemented.

Facebook As The Authentication Hub

By implementing this new service however, Facebook will become the primary authentication hub for social experiences around the web. This authentication process makes Facebook the center of user identities and yesterday’s announcement of opening up developer access to emails means Facebook has literally become a wrapper for OpenID.

While Google is aggressively going after the identity space, it appears that Facebook has the best shot at owning it as the company continues to add over 5 million members a week. We’re still watching the evolution of the social web take place and Facebook is making one solid step after the other. The company has most effectively abstracted each component of their site in contrast to companies like MySpace who haven’t been able to adapt as quickly.

We Await The Next Evolution

For now, developers will have to wait and see what the Open Graph API means for them but more importantly, they’ll need to focus on Facebook’s impending platform changes. We’ll be posting more about those changes in the coming days as we speak with developers. It’s clear that Facebook is focused on the long term vision of making the web more social and with the upcoming changes announced at yesterday’s developer garage, the company is moving in the right direction.

What do you think of Facebook’s Open Graph API announcement? How do you think this will impact developers? Do you think it will make the experience better for users?

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Today Facebook launched a nifty little tool enabling website owners and bloggers to allow their users to better share and track their content on Facebook.  The new tool provides a piece of HTML and javascript that renders a little “Share” button.  When clicked, the post is tracked by Facebook, the number of shares is shown, and via an API comments, likes, shares, and more can be tracked across all of Facebook for items shared via that button.  Today I’m going to add to that by providing a Wordpress plugin.

The FB Share Button Wordpress plugin renders the Facebook share button of your choice on your blog.  Via admin settings in Wordpress you can choose which Share button you would like to display, where you want to display it, and even provide the language for the link.  The plugin is based on the same Easy Retweet plugin by Sudar which you see on this blog.

To install, just download this link, untar and ungzip into your Wordpress plugins directory.  Activate the plugin, adjust your settings to display where you like (or you can manually add it to your template or posts – see the readme), and it will display for every post you write on your blog.  You can even turn it on or off per blog post.

I’m also working to make this FBFoundations compatible so it will load as an optional XFBML tag if you like – expect that in a future revision.  Now Wordpress bloggers everywhere have the capability to enable and track Facebook sharing on their blog.  You can download it here:

http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/facebook-fb-share-wordpress-plugin.zip

Stay tuned though – in the next revision I’m hoping to add Facebook API support so you can track and read the number of shares, comments, likes across all of Facebook from your Wordpress admin.  That will all fit in with the FB Foundations plugin I wrote earlier.

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Filed under: Productivity, Web services, Google, Social Software, web 2.0

Google has made a couple of big improvements to Google Reader, aimed at helping you easily sift through all those RSS feeds to get to the stories you'll find most relevant. One set of new features focuses on finding relevant content that you weren't already aware of, and another feature sorts the stuff you're already subscribed to.

In the sidebar, you'll notice a new "recommended sources" list. These are sites Google Reader thinks you'll like, based on your browsing habits -- if you've opted-in to let Google track those -- and your reading habits in Reader itself. You'll also see a Popular Items section from around the web, showing you some well-read and potentially relevant posts from sites you're not subscribed to.

In addition to these ways of finding new feeds to read, Google Reader can now sort your existing items "by magic," bringing the most relevant articles to the top of your list. To make this happen, go to the settings dropdown for one of your feeds or folders and choose "sort by magic." The magic is actually an algorithm that takes into account what you read and share in Reader, and it seems to work pretty well. I'm not a frequent Google Reader user, and even my relatively untrained recommendations were interesting. If you share and like items on a regular basis, yours will likely be even better.

[via Mashable]

Google Reader now sorts your feeds "by magic" originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sponsored Topics: GoogleReader - Google - RSS - Download Squad - Social Software
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