I’ve talked about Google Friend Connect in nauseum this year and it’s finally live as of late last week, but now so is Facebook’s Connect service. They launched these competing services within an hour of each other which I’m guessing was no accident.

Ultimately both services start to decentralize social networks by virtue of data portability. Basically you can start having a single login and friend’s list that use them across a myriad of sites that integrate their tech.

We started to tinker with Google Friend connect on this site, but held back as we didn’t want to have two commenting systems.  I think it will be better suited to community sites that aren’t blogs.

Google’s system appears to be easier to implement for a typical site user, but Facebook’s has launched with some very interesting uses of their technology. My particular favorite is Loopt. Loopt is one of those mobile social networks that allow you to see where your friends are at in proximity to you. I didn’t dive deep into the service, because I didn’t want to go through the process of adding a whole new series of friends. I can now leverage my Facebook friend’s list to connect through Loopt.

Evan Tana, the Director of Product Management & Marketing of Loopt, commented “Working with Facebook Connect widens the circle of friends Loopt users can interact with, combining the power of Loopt’s social-mapping service with an established network of Facebook friends.” “Loopt users will be able to receive an alert whenever Facebook friends are nearby, discover restaurants and bars recommended by their Facebook friends, and integrate their location into their Facebook feed,” he added.

I strongly suggest you do deeper research on both platforms. There is an opportunity for innovation and success here. I guarantee you it’s what I’ll be doing.