Have you been looking for a way to easily add your favorite Google products to your own site? Now you can with Google Web Elements.

There are several different elements, including ones for Calendar, News, and Maps. But the one that may be of most interest to the readers of the Social Web Blog is the Conversation element. This element, powered by Google Friend Connect, lets your visitors post comments restricted to just your site or participate in a global conversation based on a topic of interest.

A global conversation takes place on several web sites simultaneously and will have a "Global conversation" label underneath the title. When visitors post to a global conversation on a specific topic, such as mandolins (as shown in the image below), the post not only shows up on the site where they posted it, but it also on any site that chooses to embed a Conversation element on mandolins, now or in the future. So now your visitors can talk about mandolins with others interested in the same topic, no matter what site they're on.

Because the Conversation element is powered by Friend Connect, visitors will be able to leave a comment by signing in with their existing Google, Yahoo, AOL, or OpenID account. Their photos will appear next to their comments and others will be able to learn more about them by viewing their profiles. And if they see comments in a foreign language, they can use the translate feature to view those comments in their own language.

You can choose from a number of predetermined topics such as cooking, movies, photography, and travel, or be creative and come up with a topic of your own. If you see a Conversation gadget you like on another site, simply click the "Embed this" link to get the code to paste it onto your own site.

We know that there are many topics you're interested in conversing about, and we're looking forward to seeing numerous global conversations ensue.



Posted by Cassie Doll, Software Engineer, Google Friend Connect