Google's new Social Web Blog introduces us to the the social bar, a new gadget that "concentrates many of the basic social functions into a small strip at the top or bottom of your webpage."
The social bar, which is a small strip that will appear atop web pages with the inserted code, highlights recent site activity in a global fashion, and displays an expanded view of your site's activity feed, comment wall, and member list. Site owners can opt to enable the bar solo or in conjunction with other Friend Connect gadgets (like the one we have in our sidebar), and deploy it site-wide or keep it page-specific.
To add the social bar to your site, just head over to Google Friend Connect, log in, select your site, click on "social bar," customize your options, and generate your code. The HTML code can be then placed anywhere within the body of your site's HTML.
With the social bar, you'll have an immediate way to bake community and social activity into your site without adding more clutter to your side bar.
For a quick tutorial, watch the video below: