Referrals and the Future of Friend Connect

By Alex Vuchnich, CPA, CFE -

Google and Facebook recently released their Friend Connect features which allow websites to include an option to have visitors to join websites using their existing Google or Facebook IDs. Although this service is targeted mostly towards bloggers, ecommerce sites and fan sites it doesn't take much of a leap to see that this type of service has tremendous potential when extended to professional social networks like Linked In. Imagining being able to tie your referral base within Linked In into your firms own website. Clients could 'join' your website without having to actually set up a new account, allowing them to refer members of their professional networks to your site. This could end up being a must have for driving traffic to your firms website if and when Linked In and other professional networking services jump on board.