I have added a slightly modified OpenSocial gadget called Friend Introducer that I created previously to the bottom of the left sidebar of this blog (as of December 9, 2008) for FriendConnect.

Originally, this gadget was designed to let you write introductions for your friends in the canvas view and read the introductions written by those people in the profile view. It was being tested in sandboxes such as Orkut and hi5.

However, after trying out the gadgets on FriendConnect this time, a few things became clear to me.

  • There is only one blog page. Therefore, you can choose the view from profile or canvas. You can decide this in the FriendConnect SocialGadget settings screen.
  • There seems to be something called a friendconnect feature. It's unclear what it specifically does.
  • The owner is the site. Come to think of it, when I installed the FriendConnect gadget, I didn't automatically become a member. It seems that the owner is a virtual personality called the attached site.

Regarding the view, if you set it to profile view, the site will be displayed as the Owner, which is confusing. I haven't verified what happens if you retrieve the profile via API. Currently, it's displayed in canvas view, but thanks to this, it's a pointless gadget where you can just write your own introductions for your friends and can't show them to anyone (–;).

By the way, other FriendConnect gadgets have a button in the top right corner to switch to canvas view. How can I use this? I'll look into it when I have time.