In the aim of promoting their websites and boosting their traffic, many bloggers have joined all sorts of social networks from Friendster, MyBlogLog, MySpace to Facebook. However, now these networks have reasons to be afraid as they read about Google's yet another new service, Friend Connect.

Now do not be mistaken, Friend Connect is not just another of the many social networks, its more than that. Put it this way, Friend Connect aims to "unify" all the social networks available. Just thinking about this, makes me happy but also scared. There would be a pretty major change on the internet with this. Now instead of having to sign in to friendster, then facebook, then mybloglog, I can just sign in at Friend Connect. If you are familiar with China History, Google is probably like Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor. Its great and convenient, but thinking how powerful Google becomes scares me a little.

Anyway, if you are still unsure what exactly I am harping about, a look at the following diagram from mashable.com would clear your mind a little.

Now

The Future

OpenSocial marks the end of the fragmentation era. Friend Connect is the first big application of OpenSocial, immediately showing its strength: suddenly, it’s pointless to create a website widget that’s dependent only on one service when Friend Connect lets you tap into all of them at once. As new frameworks that connect more fragmented networks emerge, we will see less and less isolated applications.

From Mashable.com

So eventually, will people stop joining single social networks? Cause if they do not join Friend Connect, in the end, they would be cut from everyone, and lose out. And if they join Friend Connect, doesn't it seems pointless to join Facebook? What will happen in the end? The demise of separate large social networks? The rise of Friend Connect as a single unifying social network is ineivitable, but it would not stop others from trying to create emulate it. So if others are quick enough to grab a bite of the pie, we might just have multiple applications of OpenSocial that are connected. What do you think? Is it back to square one? Maybe not, since they are all connected. Maybe the battle would take place on another kind of stage, since its not about whose network is bigger anymore..

Having said that, I would obviously join this network and launch myself to a new level of connectivity with the world. For now, its hard to get invites or join, so let's be patient and stay tune..

Google's Ideal World