Fresh from initial launch, the Official Google Social Web Blog has posted it’s first official post announcing a new feature of Google Friend Connect – the Social Bar. The Social Bar makes it easy for site owners to beef up the sociability of their sites by adding a a social toolbar which will contain the different gadgets featured on Google Friend Connect.
Google Friend Connect users can quickly add the Social Bar to their sites by logging on to their Google Friend Connect account and immediately below the site settings is the link to the Social Bar activation link. Clicking on the link will take users to the Social Bar options page where various settings can be selected including the Social Bar’s position, where to apply comments, and an option on whether to allow anonymous comments and to let site visitors to posted YouTube links.
To activate the Social Bar on their site, users simply need to generate the Social Bar code which they need to embed on an HTML page on their sites.
Surely, the Social Bar is a great Google Friend Connect feature. It is site specific and does not run on the browser as a plug-in. It saves site owners some precious real estate on their sites.
If you are implementing the Social Bar on your site, it would be better to position the bar at the bottom of your page. Putting it on top will cover some parts of your site’s banner.
Here’s a good example of how the Google Friend Connect Social Bar was implemented on a live site.
