Google Developer Days Brazil 2009 - Make your site social with Google Friend Connect

Make your site social
with Google Friend Connect
Patrick Chanezon, chanezon@google.com
6/28/2009
With slides from Arne Roomann-Kurrik & Chris Schalk

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Who We Are
• Patrick Chanezon
oDeveloper Advocate, Google
oManages client and cloud advocacy teams, also
helps with OpenSocial and Google Friend Connect
o Author of Time.com Social Lists
• Chris Schalk
o Developer Advocate, Google
o Speaks about the benefits of Google Friend Connect
around the world
o Author of Plane Crazy
• Arne Roomann-Kurrik
o Developer Programs, Google
o Writes samples and documentation for developers
o Author of The Chow Down


Who You Are

• Web developer
• Experienced working with server-side technology
oJava, PHP, Ruby, Python
oSQL, Object Data Store
• Probably have an existing website
o Users visit your site for a specific theme or activity
o Existing database of registered accounts
• Heard about Google Friend Connect
o Don't need a quick integration
o Have additional questions


You Might Be Interested In How Google Friend
Connect...
• Can let you accept sign-ins from several social
networks plus OpenID
• Can deliver a richer social experience for all of your
users
• Enables your users to send invites and notifications to
their friends, increasing your site's exposure and
growth


And We're Here To Answer Your Questions!

• Google Friend Connect (GFC):
o Is a "meta" social network
o Reads/Writes to OpenSocial social networks
o Reads from Portable Contacts sites
o Exposes its own OpenSocial developer APIs
 JavaScript gadgets
 RESTful server-to-server calls
o Has no icon:


Google Friend Connect
• May 2008 Google Friend Connect Preview
– Preview release, for whitelisted sites
– make your site social
– long tail, no technical skills needed
– copy and paste javascript
– add OpenSocial applications
• December 2008: General Availability
• February 2009: Social Bar
– Even easier integration
• March 2009: Javascript and REST APIs
– Allows deep customized integration in websites
– server or client side integration
– good fit for large websites with technical teams
7


Demo: "Cut & Paste" Google
Friend Connect


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty5Q6XF1424


Why Friend Connect?

Photo by crowt59 http://www.flickr.com/photos/crowt59/1444807366/


You're Probably A Social Developer Already

• A website is a social app!
o Use social signals in your content
o Highlight user generated content on your site
o Pull data from web services
o Post notices to social websites


Every Site Has Its Platform(s)

• These interactions are driven by APIs
• These APIs are the platforms for your site
• Users can come from any integration point
o You must be fundamentally cross platform
 More than mobile
 More than desktop


The Web Is Like A Series Of Platforms

• OpenSocial created a standard for writing social apps
o Access users from several social networks
o Adoption is fast!


Too Many Platforms?

• Fixed costs can be prohibitive:
Deployment
o
Cross platform coding
o
Per - platform support
o
• Traditional cross-platform models stop working

• Don't think "which containers do I run on"!


The New Model For Social

• Better to think, "who do I talk to"?...


Defining Types Of API Interactions

• ... and how do I talk to them?


GFC Simplifies Your Development

• GFC lets you talk to one set of APIs to do common
tasks...


GFC Adds Value To Existing Infrastructure

• ...and gives you some nice bonuses.


Why On My Server?

Photo by Robert Scoble:http://www.flickr.com/photos/scobleizer/2251820987/


A Deeply Integrated Website:

• Allows Google Friend Connect users to log in for the
first time as if they were already registered on the site
•
• Uses social signals to highlight appropriate content
• Uses content to make new social connections
•
• Encourages users to share their experiences with the
rest of the web


What Does GFC Give My Website?

• GFC is a wrapper between dozens of sites and your
own.
• Integrations can be categorized in three ways:


A Simplified Model

• IN
owho can access your site without registering?
• MIDDLE
o what can a user do with their friends?
• OUT
o where can users share their actions with the web?


The INs

© PhotoXpress.com http://photoxpress.com/Content/bib-tomato-sauce-boy/163613


Identity Matters

• Goal: Allow a Google Friend Connect user to log
into your site as if they were a registered user.
•
• Steps:
o Signing In
o Obtaining Data
o Storing Data


Signing In

• To allow users to sign in, simply render a button:

• With a simple bit of JavaScript:

google.friendconnect.renderSignInButton({
'id': 'target-id',
'text' : 'Click here to join ',
'style': 'standard' });


Demo: Creating a sign-in UI for a site with
an existing registration system


Public REST Requests
• Much of a site's data is public
• Fetch site info:
http://www.google.com/friendconnect/api
/people/@owner/@self?format=xml&id=<site id>

• Fetch site members: @owner/@friends
• Fetch a person's public profile: <user id>/@self

• Play with it! http://bit.ly/chowdownkurrik


Acting As A Website

• Sites are issued a Consumer Key and Consumer
Secret
• Using these, your site may authorize itself to GFC
with two-legged OAuth
•
• Sites may:
o Read + write App Data for any of their users
o Request activities to be posted for any of their users
•
• Good for background processing!


"Finding Yourself"
• Fetching the current user when you don't know their
ID:
/api/people/@me/@self

• Can't just type that into a browser and expect data
back!
o Still need a user context
o Expressed through fcauth tokens

• Logged in users send cookies
named:
fcauth09788020278569175613

o The number is your site ID
o The value is the token


Acting As A User
• Now urls which require a context:
/api/people/@me/@self

• Get on by appending the fcauth value:
/api/people/@me/@self?fcauth=XXXXXXXXXXX
• Your site can:
o Read and write App Data for the current user
o Request activities to be posted for the current
user*

• Does not need OAuth!
• Supported by most OpenSocial Client Libraries
http://bit.ly/opensocialclientlibraries

Demo: Obtaining the fcauth token and
making social requests


Gotta Put That Data Somewhere!

• What kind of data will your site deal with?
• How can you structure your data store to handle this
data?


Locally Registered Users

• Lives in your data store
• Site-specific profile fields
o"What's my favorite airplane"
• Probably no friend data


Google Friend Connect Users

• Lives in the cloud
• Uses a common set of profile fields:
oThumbnail URL
oProfile URL
o"About Me"
oCustom URLs
• Brings their friends with them


"Offline" Google Friend Connect Users

• GFC users live in the cloud
• Profiles, images, URLs can all change between
sessions
• The only static data is the user ID


Data Representations

• Your data model must cope with multiple user
providers
• Simple way:
o Add a column to your existing users table:


Demo: Storing site data keyed to a GFC
user. Building "My Favorite Airplane".


Who Is Logging In?


The INs Summary

• Goal: Allow a Google Friend Connect user to log
into your site as if they were a registered user.
•
• Approach
o Let users log in with JavaScript
o Fetch social data with REST calls
o Adapt your data store for social user data
o Create an authorization flow
o Cache for performance


The MIDDLE

© PhotoXpress.com http://photoxpress.com/Content/machine-equipment-factory/3216021


Being More Social

• Goal: Use social signals to highlight content
• Goal: Use content to make new social connections
•
• Steps:
o Add social chrome to your site
o Restructure your views to take advantage of the extra
data


Social Chrome: Per-Site Profiles


Social Chrome: Integrated UI

• "Click to login" as a first class citizen


Social Chrome: Smart UI

Registered user: Registered user with GFC
account:

GFC user:


Social Makes Everything Better

• Structuring your site to encourage social behaviors
• Provide incentives for logging in
o"Share this with your friends"
o"See what your friends are doing"
• Provide data views that are useful for everyone


Simple Social Views - Registered Users

• Show data from all users
• Choose engaging views:
•
o "Top scores"
o "Highest rated reviewers"
o "Recent updates"


Simple Social Views - GFC Users

• Expose information in the context of friendships
•
o "What are my friends' favorite airplanes?"
o "Are my friends playing any games?"
o "How do I rank compared to my friends?"


Demo: Simple social views. Building
"What are my friends' favorite airplanes?"


Intermediate Social Views - GFC Users

• Contextual data is valuable!
• Social signals help users navigate your content:
•
o "Some of your friends liked this guitar"
o "Your friend gave this restaurant a poor review"
o "Two of your friends read this article"
o "A friend of yours solved this puzzle"


Advanced Social Views - GFC Users

• Give users a reason to come back to your site!
• Help users establish relationships:


Demo: Advanced social views.
Building "Users who also


The MIDDLE - Summary

• Goal: Use social signals to direct users to
appropriate content
• Goal: Use content as a context to make new social
connections between users
•
• Approach:
o Promoted social users to first class citizens
o Changed data views:
 Displayed activities of site users and friends
 Embedded friend data into content
 Encouraged social interaction around content


The OUTs

© PhotoXpress.com http://photoxpress.com/Content/graphic-road-sign-abstract/1690408


Learn To Share

• Goal: Let users share their experiences on your
site with the rest of the web.
•
• Steps:
o Invites
o Activity Streams
•


Invites

• Built-in functionality, just put a button on your page
• Invite friends from linked accounts or email


Sharing

• Get users to share your site with some of the most
popular social websites


Activity Streams

• Destinations where your activities can go
• Different for each user
• Depends on user permissions


Activity Streams

• The social web has an inherent sharing nature
• One activity post may wind up in many places!


Activity Streams

• Activities mean greater exposure
• Exposure drives users to your site


Clever CURLing Related Title Here
• Posting activities also done via REST:
url = "http://www.google.com/friendconnect/api
/activities/@me/@self?fcauth=<fcauth>

• Posting from the command line:
data="{"title":"a title", "body":"test
"}"

curl -X POST $url
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
-d "$data"


Sharing With Your Site Members

• Activity updates on your site are available in your
site's activity stream feed:


Sharing With The World

• Activity updates are viewable across every GFC site
by looking at a user's profile


Demo: Writing activities server-side.


Learn To Share

• Goal: Let users share their experiences on your
site with the rest of the web.

• Approach:
o Added invite chrome to let users share content
o Used activity streams to maximize site exposure


Google Friend Connect in the real world:
TIME.com and Huffington Post


“Oh I get by with a little help from my friends,
Mmm I get high with a little help from my friends,
Oh I'm gonna try with a little help from my
friends”

Beatles


2009 TIME.com Social Lists

May 2009
06.08 XXX


TIME.com

• 24-hour global news gathering operation with 150+ journalists
• In-depth reporting throughout the day on the issues, people,
places and organizations that matter
• Trusted commentary and unmatched access
• 141.6 million page views (omniture)
• 17 million unique visitors (omniture)


TIME.com April Traffic Highlights

Pageviews in April were the highest in TIME.com history!
Pageviews (000)

 Record Site Traffic
● TIME.com pageviews increased by +195% year over year*

 Record User Engagement
PV Per Person
● Time.com users consumed 14 pageviews per person, which is the
highest in TIME.com history!*

 TIME.com Multimedia Highlights
● Video streams experienced a 61% increase vs. last month

Sources – *Nielsen Net Ratings Apr 2009 vs Apr 2008


TIME.com Daily Specials

TIME.com’s Daily Specials provide a
trusted and entertaining perspective on
relevant current events.
These interactive specials use photo and video
galleries to engage the readers, and topics can
range from important international events like
the Pope visiting the Middle East) to light
hearted topics like the Best iPhone Apps.

Recent Popular Daily Specials Pageviews
• top 10 disastrous letterman interviews - 7.4mm
• top 11 iphone applications - 5.9mm
•10 things you can like about $4 gas - 4.3mm
•10 essential sites - 3.0mm

Source: Omniture SiteCatalyst – Past 12 Months


Specials Traffic

176MM
From January – April 2009


Challenge

How can we make our daily Top 10’s
more fun and engaging?


TIME Social Lists Demo


Architecture

Javascript APIs

JSONP

HTML + JavaScript


HuffingtonPost Demo


In Conclusion...

Photo by specialkrb http://www.flickr.com/photos/specialkrb/3265303889/


Goals

• Allow a Google Friend Connect user to log into
your site as if they were a registered user.
o JavaScript sign in, social data via REST
o Data model, cache

• Use social signals to highlight content
• Use content to make new social connections
o Social Chrome
o Social Views

• Let users share their experiences on your site
with the rest of the web.
o Invites
o Activities


Google Developer Days Brazil 2009 - Make your site social with Google Friend Connect

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