Google To Challenge Facebook Again 197
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Soulskill
from the clash-of-the-titans dept.
from the clash-of-the-titans dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Google is set to make a fresh attempt to gain a foothold in the booming social networking business, seeking to counter the growing threat that Facebook poses to some of its core services. USA Today reports that the search giant is upgrading Gmail to add social-media tools similar to those found on Facebook, including photo and video sharing within the Gmail application, along with a new tool for status updates. According to reports, Google is planning to give Gmail users a way to aggregate the updates of their various contacts on the service, creating a stream of notifications that would echo the similar real-time streams from Facebook and Twitter. Google's decision to exploit the heavily-used Gmail service as the basis for its latest assault on the social networking business partly reflects the failure of Google's previous stand-alone efforts to enter the social networking sector. Its Orkut networking service, though launched before Facebook, has failed to gain a mass following in most parts of the world, despite success in Brazil, and its acquisition of Twitter rival Jaiku ended in failure after it scrapped development of the service." Update: 02/09 19:32 GMT by KD : It's been announced as Google Buzz; CNET has a detailed writeup.
Google Fail..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Less, not more! (Score:5, Interesting)
Facebook/Twitter Threaten Google News? Laughable. (Score:2, Interesting)
... seeking to counter the growing threat that Facebook poses to some of its core services.
What?
From the expert quoted in that article:
"Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category. And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch. We will continue to watch this space."
Yeah, in the same way that McDonalds could be a major disruptor to grocery stores. Rampant, ridiculous speculation and little more. Remember when MySpace was supposed to be the greatest news source EVER? And tried to become a gaming platform [slashdot.org]? Unless I've missed some new development with Twitter and Facebook (I'm only a user of the latter), this is preposterous.
... because that's exactly the kind of thing I do with Google Reader. And it allows me to dump very little time into searching for news and maximize my time spent reading the news.
The only thing you'd see with Twitter or Facebook adding news is social networking bloat. That's it. One guy trying to do everything and be your one stop shop. It rarely works. Even some of Google's efforts to be your one stop shop die on the fine and fails encompass more of what you need from the web.
Not to toot my own horn or pat myself on the back too hard but the only reason I'm even in the standings on Slashdot submissions is Google and Google News. Let me know when Facebook or Twitter offer a simple RSS interface that I can log into from anywhere and share stories with my contacts [google.com]. Also, they'll need to be able to search the news, turn that search into an RSS feed and let me view that with the feed reader
Re:privacy is key (Score:2, Interesting)
This might be interesting if they manage to get the privacy thing right. If they don't, I see it as a disaster. I use gmail to communicate with a much wider audience than Facebook. If somehow they managed to let me easily and effectively segment users into different groups, with STRONG WALLS between groups, then it might be interesting.
Although it would take quite a few HCI PhDs to figure out how to do it all without cluttering an already cluttery gmail UI.
Wouldn't you really just need to have two accounts, your real life account and then your second one for all the naughty stuff you don't want people to find out about? Of all the drama stories I've seen or heard about, it's usually because the two lives mixed. Embarrassing photos associated with your name on your facebook, web posts associated back to you, mistress texting you on the same phone you use for your normal life with the wife able to read said messages when you set the phone down for a moment, messages coming in to your regular mailbox and she reads them, etc.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that if you're doing stuff you don't want your spouse to know about, you need to reexamine why you got married and whether you should still be married. It might be kinder to just end the pretense and you can both get on with your lives. If you want to be a freaky swinger, just be honest and start dating the freaky swingers. If you wanted to be an ultra-orthodox jew you wouldn't start out dating regular women and spring the religion surprise, right? Of course not. You start from the hardest criteria first and find women you like who fall into it. If you find yourself torn between wanting to be a televangelist and having gay sex with male prostitutes, you have to decide which is more important to you, Jesus or the dong. Maybe you could move your ministry to a gay-friendly denomination? The lying and hypocrisy is too much BS.
I think it would be ok to have gmail with groups for church friends, rpg friends, work friends, family, etc, there's no embarrassment if the those get mixed. But anything that could be embarrassing should be on a separate account and your real name should not be associated with it.
Re:Google Fail..... (Score:3, Interesting)
They have a clear vision with Wave? If they do, they have done a terrible job communicating it. Wave looks promising to us propeller heads, but the general public is confused by Wave. It's slow and without knowing some secret incantations, it is brutal to navigate. Most people look at it for 2 minutes and give up.
Facebook is butt ugly but simple to jump in and use. If Google is going to have any prayer of making any social center work, it has to get back to fundamentals.
Google's original product was great because it had one text box and one button (two if you count 'I Feel Lucky'. Any idiot could use it and feel instantly smarter. They need to get back to that kind of simplicity if they want to go anywhere in the social arena.
Re:Will there be any difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Facebook : 2010 :: CB Radio : 1975 (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe I should rephrase it.
I think that security is one niche that Google can exploit, since Facebook has failed on that front, and Google has a good reputation in that area.
Really, though, there needs to be a "feature" that is exciting for the young crowd.
Imagine something like Webkinz, [wikipedia.org] where kids under 13 are already addicted. Funnel those kids into a social network when they reach 13, duplicate facebook's features, and then they'll never need to join fb. In 5 years, you have 13 to 18 year olds hooked on your fb replacement.