Google to Launch own social networking site

You heard me. With Facebook and Myspace slightly a quiver, Google previews its FRIEND CONNECT service tonight. I’ve been reading some articles about this from various sources but TechCrunch confirmed this morning that Google finally responded (and confirmed) FRIEND CONNECT.

Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social — and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening’s Campfire One), any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.

So anyway, Google will reveal more details along with a demo tonight so stay tuned. Meanwhile, you can read the TechCrunch article here. So, What do you think?