Google Tries Social Networking Again, Challenging Facebook Events (theverge.com) 58
What's Google working on after shuttering Google+ ?
An anonymous reader quotes The Verge: Google's in-house incubator, Area 120, is working on a new social networking app called Shoelace which is aimed at organizing local events and activities. You use it by listing your interests in the app, allowing it to recommend a series of "hand-picked" local activities which it calls "Loops." You can also organize your own events, and there's a map interface to view and RSVP to other people's Loops.
Shoelace's soft-launch comes just months after Google shut down Google+, its most prominent attempt at building a social media platform. However, rather than trying to create a new all-encompassing social network to rival the likes of Facebook, Shoelace seems to have much more modest ambitions that take aim at Facebook's ubiquitous Events functionality...
[I]t's also only available in New York City at the moment; the team says it's hoping to expand to more cities across the US soon.
An anonymous reader quotes The Verge: Google's in-house incubator, Area 120, is working on a new social networking app called Shoelace which is aimed at organizing local events and activities. You use it by listing your interests in the app, allowing it to recommend a series of "hand-picked" local activities which it calls "Loops." You can also organize your own events, and there's a map interface to view and RSVP to other people's Loops.
Shoelace's soft-launch comes just months after Google shut down Google+, its most prominent attempt at building a social media platform. However, rather than trying to create a new all-encompassing social network to rival the likes of Facebook, Shoelace seems to have much more modest ambitions that take aim at Facebook's ubiquitous Events functionality...
[I]t's also only available in New York City at the moment; the team says it's hoping to expand to more cities across the US soon.
Discontinued in 3 2 1 (Score:1)
Google has a track record of shelving projects a couple years down the line. No point wasting your time on something like this and you're probably better off using something else.
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They do not shut down everything.. but a large majority.
https://killedbygoogle.com/ [killedbygoogle.com] lists 143 services killed. That is a huge number.
Further the longevity of the thing is no guarantee of it not being shut down, so even waiting until later does not help against it, so better just skip any google product that you absolutely do not have to use.
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Re: How about (Score:2)
socializing for nerd made easy (Score:1)
i like it :)
Fool me once... or at least a few dozen times... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google likes trying all sorts of things, seeing what sticks, and ruthlessly culling anything that isn't an obvious success. This sounds reasonable in some sort of Darwinian sense, but the inevitable downside is that no one believes Google will stick by their services anymore. Now that reputation is catching up to them, I think. Comments below the article are telling:
"They discontinued Google+, Orkut and Jaiku all within 10 yrs. Why would anyone want to set themselves up for disappointment when Google decides to abandon or fold it into yet another try at social media platforms?"
"Don’t forget Buzz!"
"Or Google Wave!"
"Or Google Reader! (Not social media but still, that one hurts for me)"
"I was caught by just about every one of those. Not happening again"
"Loops"? (Score:1)
1. Do not use Google.
2. WTF is it with social media companies and imbecilic names? "Tweets"! "Loops!" "Vines!" Can we not simply use words that already exist to describe things?
It's a mashup? (Score:3, Insightful)
So they're trying to mash up Facebook events and MeetUp? With just a dash of Craigslist events? I'm trying to find a problem that this is solving.
And they're also going to bully the cell phone service providers into packaging it with their phones, with no way to remove it, so that they can brag about their installed base.
Is anyone else still salty about not being able to remove G+ now that they've changed it to a business only platform?
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So they're trying to mash up Facebook events and MeetUp? With just a dash of Craigslist events? I'm trying to find a problem that this is solving.
The problem is people are doing it on other companies' platforms and not on Google, so those other companies are making money from it (somehow), and Google is not.
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Please tell me you're typing that on a MacBook Pro with a Butterfly keyboard.
Will it help me meet chicks, or get a better job? (Score:2)
Like I said... (Score:2)
They should just give up on social networking. (Score:1)
Fail again (Score:1)
Another attempt by Google to storm the walls of the social media garden. Google will fail again. Why? Because Googlers are antisocial. They really are. They have no idea what it is to interact normally with real people, living out their preciious autistic lives in their precious autistic utopia as they do.
Sigh. Yet another antisocial social media offering from Google. Have we seen this movie before, or have we?
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Ah, so this explains why Google and Facebook were never caught red-handed exchanging memos about not poaching the other company's employees.
What few socially competent people Google once hired already, long ago, departed for the permanently greener pastures of Zuckerberg's infinite-loop apology tour. Further employee interchange is a non-entity, having now become fully sorted according to type.
How did that work out?
Well, we know that Facebook got all the goo
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nothing screams social competence like working for The Man— the man with a stranglehold on all the voting shares
You seem blissfully unaware of the Google's share structure. Hint: Zuck just did what your "men" did, norms be damned.
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Another attempt by Google to storm the walls of the social media garden. Google will fail again. Why? Because Googlers are antisocial. They really are. They have no idea what it is to interact normally with real people, living out their preciious autistic lives in their precious autistic utopia as they do.
Sigh. Yet another antisocial social media offering from Google. Have we seen this movie before, or have we?
Yes we have.
uh... what ? (Score:4, Insightful)
aimed at organizing local events and activities. You use it by listing your interests in the app, allowing it to recommend a series of "hand-picked" local activities which it calls "Loops." You can also organize your own events, and there's a map interface to view and RSVP to other people's Loops.
So, in other words, meetup.com refused to be bought out and now they're building their own?
Seriously? This is what's coming out of Google these days?
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impressive (Score:2)
wow, that is impressive, i wonder how facebook will recover from this blow!