Near the bottom of this blog's left sidebar, I added Friend Introducer—an OpenSocial gadget I created previously—slightly modified for FriendConnect (as of December 9, 2008).

Originally, this gadget was designed so that you write an introduction for your friends in canvas view, and read introductions written about that person in profile view. It was something I had been testing in sandboxes like Orkut and hi5.

However, trying out the gadget on FriendConnect revealed a few clear takeaways:

  • A blog only has one surface. Therefore, you must choose either profile or canvas view. You can configure this in the FriendConnect Social Gadget settings screen.
  • There seems to be a friendconnect feature. It's unclear what it specifically does.
  • The Owner is the site itself. Come to think of it, adding the FriendConnect gadget didn't automatically make me a member. It seems the Owner role is assumed by a virtual persona representing the site where it is embedded.

Regarding the view, setting it to profile view shows the site as the Owner, resulting in a confusing state. I haven't tested yet what happens when fetching a profile via the API. It is currently displayed in canvas view, but as a result, it has turned into a rather pointless gadget where I can only write intros for my own friends without being able to show them to anyone (–;.

Come to think of it, other FriendConnect gadgets have a button in the upper right to switch to canvas view. How can you enable that? I'd like to look into it when I have some time.