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Google Already Has An Invisible Like Button For Google Me, You Just Don’t Know It

On August 7, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

Another day and I read another post on how Facebook’s Like button is slowly obliterating Google’s Link as the next currency of the web. The pondered question in this case is what is going to be Google’s counter-offensive against the Like.

The assumption is that Google as a search engine has worked on the principle of ranking web pages according to the number of other pages linking to it. Well, here’s the deal: when a person likes something on the web, in most cases, a link is created. Google can see this Link, and hence can understand and incorporate the Like, in its scheme of things.

This mechanism has already been publicized by Google, but I’m surprised how many folks still keep discovering it as if it were something new. For example, see this from yesterday.

Google’s Invisible Like Mechanism

Google’s Like mechanism was announced by Google in Oct 2009 in a blog post announcing Social Search, which linked to this help article that explains how it works in the background.

The battle is between Facebook’s Like and Google’s Profiles. For Facebook to capture your Like, it requires you to have an account on Facebook. For Google to capture your Likes, you need to have a Google Profile. Now, let’s compare what Facebook and Google can capture:

Facebook can capture only your Facebook Likes.

Google Profiles can capture:

Public content you share on Facebook
All tweets on Twitter
All shares on Google Reader
All shares on FriendFeed
All status updates on LinkedIn
All favorites from YouTube
All likes, faves, photos from Flickr and Picasa
All bookmarks from Delicious
All stories you have Digged
Everything you have Stumbled Upon
Everything you have Disqused
All your Blogger and WordPress blog posts
And dozens of existing and future sites using the XFN or FOAF standards (see FAQ)

Get the picture? From a technical standpoint, Google has all the arms and ammunition to capture Likes across a plethora of social websites. If you have a Google Profile, every action on any of your connected social websites (sort of) results in a Like being submitted to Google.

Google’s Challenge

Presentation: Currently, Google is surfacing all this behind-the-scenes information only through Social Search results. Google doesn’t have a social web site where you can see your friends’ Likes and interact with them. This is potentially the core of what Google Me is all about.

Numbers: Facebook has 500 million, very few have Google Profiles. We have been waiting for that big push for Google Profiles. It is imminent, and apparently, very close.

Tagged with: facebook • Google Me

Skeptic Geek: Now on Facebook!

On July 28, 2010, in Personal, by Mahendra Palsule

Though I prefer Google Reader and Twitter as my news sources of choice, many others use Facebook.

A few weeks back, I decided to experiment with Facebook Like buttons on all my blog posts. The results were very surprising. Earlier, many of my posts became popular because they were shared by some influencers on Google Reader and Twitter. However, Facebook has surprisingly remained a significant source of readers.

More importantly, since Skeptic Geek is platform and company agnostic, posts become popular on different networks depending on the content. For example, my post on Is Windows Live Delivering What Google Buzz Promised? took a critical stance on Google, was not shared by any influencers I know, but has almost 950 shares on Facebook (at the time of this writing).

This is why I decided to put an end to my neglect of the Facebook Platform, and have chosen to leverage it. I remain platform agnostic, and will continue to be impartial in my critique of the social web. This is just another way of letting my readers have more choice in their preferred way of reading Skeptic Geek.

If you wish, you can become a fan on Facebook here.

Tagged with: facebook

Matrix: Google Buzz, Twitter Chirp, Facebook F8

On April 23, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

This is how the events launching new social network features compared:

Pretty self-explanatory.

Tagged with: buzz • facebook • Twitter

Predicting Tech News in 2015

On April 7, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

Last month, Stuart Miles, founder of the gadget and tech blog Pocket-Lint, asked me to contribute to its feature on “FutureWeek”:

What gadgets will we be using in 2015, where will Augmented Reality take us? What about robots, gadgets of the future, super-fast internet speeds, cars, materials of 2015 and much, much more.

The entire set of stories make excellent reading with insights from thought-leaders around the web. Apart from gadgets, there are other posts on what to expect from the semantic web and how we will consume content in 2015. Being in the technology news business, my thoughts were included in What will be the big tech stories in 2015.

I would like to elaborate on my thoughts here. I must say that these ‘predictions’ are nothing but a reflection of my hopes as well as fears. Further, I sent these on 21st March, after which there have been some interesting developments.

Facebook will not become AOL 2.0. To remain competitive, it will be forced to interoperate with other networks.

There has been discussion on this issue time and again on the web. I personally think the web is resilient to any attempts to dominate it in the long term. I also think the team working at Facebook is wise to learn from the past.

Social Networks will no longer be "places" on the web. Instead, your "social graph" will follow you on the web.

You will control your social graph – choose and add from among different networks – Facebook, Twitter, Google, Windows Live – which will all be interoperable using an open standard. This evolution of social networking will be similar to that of Instant Messaging, where the open XMPP standard became popular, achieving interoperability to an extent.
Rather than social networks wanting you to visit and spend time on their site, they will compete to become an inseparable part of the time you spend online, whether mobile or desktop.
The social graph that follows you will help personalize and customize your browsing experience for everything:

Primary Content on websites – for example, which headlines/articles you see
Ads – tailored to your social identity and graph
Search Results
Which friends of yours are online, shown within your browser
Reactions/comments from your friends optionally shown for the web page you’re visiting

All the above is pretty self-explanatory. We are already seeing glimpses of this in Facebook chat, Google Sidewiki, and so on. Interestingly, one week after I sent these, there were reports of Facebook planning a “Like” button for any content anywhere on the web, and launching a Meebo-style persistent toolbar. Imagine my reaction when I saw these developments!

Websites will personalize according to your social graph using mechanisms like Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, Twitter Following/Followers graph, etc.

This is an ongoing trend I see towards a personalized relevant web. Again, a week afterwards, there were reports of Facebook sharing your profile data with external sites, so that these sites will tailor content for you.

I had also pointed out Facebook Connect being a mechanism for precisely this goal, when I wrote in January about Facebook’s non-portable data-portability. Marshall Kirkpatrick now points it out as well: there’s a big difference between opt-in and opt-out “data portability”.

Anti-trust legislation will be a major threat to Google’s dominance both in US and EU. "Will Google split up?" will be a question discussed in the media.

This is speculation. Google’s expansion into virtually every aspect of technology have already brought it under the scrutiny of anti-trust authorities.

Apple’s mindshare will start to decline. As Steve Jobs approaches retirement, questions will be asked of Apple’s survival.

Two weeks after I sent this, the question of what happens after the iPad and after Steve Jobs has been asked. I have my doubts about Apple’s innovation and competitive capabilities in a post-Jobs era, but would be happy if they’re proved wrong.

Privacy and Anti-Piracy will continue to make headlines.

On Privacy: We would move to a public-by-default, private by opt-in model.
On Anti-Piracy: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will be in place, along with a global version of the DMCA.

These are my fears and they are very real. ACTA negotiations are making progress, and includes a global version of the DMCA. The politicians behind these negotiations may not understand technology and the people who understand the technology are busy writing about other topics that get their blogs more traffic. It’s also a case of those who matter, don’t understand; those who understand, don’t matter.

Do read the other pieces in FutureWeek. And thanks to Stuart for the opportunity to share my thoughts!

Tagged with: facebook • future • relevance • social networks

Google Buzz doesn’t KISS

On February 14, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

This is my perspective on Google Buzz as it exists today, borrowing heavily from other “thought leaders”, whom I admire and respect.

January 2009

At the beginning of last year in Jan ‘09, Louis Gray, FriendFeed evangelist, shared his ideas on What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users. Among other things, he suggested a “Lite” version for new users, and a better definition of what it is and how people should use it.

The next day, Stowe Boyd responded in his blog post:

…But the average schmoe, wandering around in Friendfeedland, having not perfected either massive social popularity or the followership model will try the service out and quickly leave never to return because there is no ‘it’ to get for them. There is no there there, as Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland.

December 2009

Fast-forward to the end of the year. Louis Gray, in Dec ‘09, said Like Convergence, Aggregation Is Better In Theory:

It sounds great. But despite my excitement and evangelism around such tools, for the most part, they have not flourished. It seems that, instead, people want to enjoy the content in its native environment, or keep things simple. I…wonder, does the world need to develop a perfect aggregator, again?
It’s possible that the disappointing answer is no…but I am thinking that “aggregation” is the new “convergence”. It looks great on paper, and some people will carry a Swiss Army Knife with them everywhere, but most won’t.

2010: Enter Google Buzz

Stowe Boyd’s First Look at Google Buzz:

In my Buzz…several extremely well connected folks…(are) buzzing up a storm, with hundreds of folks chiming in…It’s just the experience that I disliked in Friendfeed: A-list pundits holding court with dozens or hundreds of acolytes jumping in…I don’t want to socialize in a world comprised of A-lister dominated chatrooms, wandering from room to room.

Fred Wilson’s Thoughts On Buzz:

Like FriendFeed, Buzz allows me to “pump my data into it”. It is an aggregator as well as a updating service. But that poses a problem in some ways. What does this service want to be?

Goal of Buzz

The goal of Google Buzz was best elucidated by DeWitt Clinton in a buzz post:

The idea is that someday, any host on the web should be able to implement these open protocols and send messages back and forth in real time with users from any network, without any one company in the middle. The web contains the social graph, the protocols are standard web protocols, the messages can contain whatever crazy stuff people think to put in them. Google Buzz will be just another node (a very good node, I hope) among many peers. Users of any two systems should be able to send updates back and forth, federate comments, share photos, send @replies, etc., without needing Google in the middle and without using a Google-specific protocol or format.

In the comments of that post, DeWitt further says:

There are two separate challenges here — a) how do we make the Google Buzz experience the best in the world, and b) how do we make the protocols that power it completely open and transparent and non-Google specific.

Let us look at a) and b).

a) The Buzz Experience: FriendFeed 2.0?

FriendFeed aggregates lifestreams of all your friends and has sophisticated filtering and searching capabilities. The challenges of consuming all your friends’ lifestreams are well described by Mark Krynsky towards the end of his post looking at Lifestreaming in 2009.

The minority who loved FriendFeed is one of the most active in providing feedback for the Buzz team. For example, see this buzz post linking a post on 14 Things that can be improved about Google Buzz that compares Buzz with FriendFeed, which was apparently cross-posted to the Buzz team’s internal lists.

I myself have been a lover of FriendFeed. However, I also remember how FriendFeed failed to attract mainstream users. Does Google want to make the “Buzz experience” appealing only to a small minority of web users like FriendFeed did?

FriendFeeders are the most vocal feedback providers to Google because the evil, walled-garden, closed Facebook bought our darling, and now Google is the knight in shining armor who is rescuing the FriendFeed aggregation model with open standards and APIs. The problem? I do not recall anyone complaining about information overload in Facebook, which is the network mainstream users have adopted, not FriendFeed.

Instead of getting feedback from FriendFeeders on how to “improve” Buzz, Google should look to those who never liked FriendFeed.

My take: Aggregation is not going to organize anyone’s social experience. Google should not emulate FriendFeed if Buzz wants to gain mainstream adoption.

b) It’s the APIs, Stupid!

Will Buzz be disruptive because of open data standards as Marshall Kirkpatrick discussed?

…it may actually intend to be a platform – the central hub for a world of distributed social networking…Buzz users should be able to read, comment on and message to conversations with people who have never seen Buzz in their lives, simply by subscribing to their feeds. There’s huge potential for interoperability here.

In another interesting blog post, Jillesvangurp extrapolated this idea to see how it can impact Facebook:

Open APIs, unrestricted syndication and aggregation of notifications, events, status updates, etc…First thing to catch up will be those little social network sites that almost nobody uses but collectively are used by everybody. Hook them up to buzz, twitter, etc. Result, more detailed event streams popping up outside of Facebook. Eventually people will start hooking up Facebook as well, with or without the help of Facebook. By this time endorsement will seem like a good survival stream for Facebook.

This will no doubt be good for the social web in general. However, is Google ready to give up on the Buzz Experience – as a destination on the web? Google’s revenues come from ads. Do these open data standards and APIs include places for inserting ads?

Social is about People, not Data

One of the things that enthused me about Buzz was Google’s stated goal of organizing the social information on the web — finding relevance in the noise. Google’s approach to achieving relevance is data-driven and algorithmic. I had and continue to have high hopes for Google Social Search and it’s ability to rank relevance of information according to my social circle. But:

Relevance ranking works for information, not people.

From what I’ve seen in Buzz, the approach of aggregation of lifestreams is not working. It didn’t work in FriendFeed either for millions of users who found it complex and overwhelming.

What I observe in mainstream users is not a quest for intelligent auto-filtering and auto-relevance sorting of aggregated terabytes of data, published and shared in real-time across multiple networks, but a place that offers simple ways to keep in touch with their friends, see their photos, videos, comment on them, and chat with each other. Facebook fulfilled this need and is used by 400 million people today.

Conclusion: Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Buzz is not just FriendFeed style aggregation. Add email integration, violating the sanctity of the inbox. Add privacy issues because of integration with the email address book. Add location aware features. Add the complexity of the integration with Google Reader. Add new social search operators. Add more instructions on how to do this and that. Now think of why mainstream users didn’t flock to FriendFeed, which had the most well designed aggregation and search interface that ever existed.

Consider the iPad. The latest concept coming out of Cupertino didn’t add any new “features” to their earlier products. They trimmed the feature-set, keeping it simple, thus making it usable by everyone. Open data standards? 400 million are locked up in a closed network and don’t care. Nor will users of the iPad.

As a product, Google Buzz is clearly engineered, not designed, by nerds at the dance, as Mathew Ingram put it. With its current approach, the same web-savvy minority who uses Gmail is likely to adopt Buzz. Not those who are hooked to Facebook, or continue to use Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail.

For Google Buzz to be successful, Google cannot afford to forget the KISS principle. Without that, there’s no romantic Buzz this Valentine’s Day.

Tagged with: facebook • friendfeed • google buzz

Google Buzz + Reader + Twitter + Facebook = Noise

On February 12, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

I’m having a hard time deciding whom to follow on which network with duplicate shares everywhere. The problem is compounded further by folks who auto-share from one network to another. There is no value in following people who share the same thing on Reader, Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. Duplication simply amplifies noise and reduces signal.

This is a real problem with social media today. Everyone wants maximum likes, shares, retweets on each and every thing they share. Their hope, understandably, is that each morsel they throw into social media becomes a feast on which everyone will drool.

Well, count me out. If someone is auto-feeding the same thing on all networks, it doesn’t add any value to me to follow them on all networks. Especially if they are not engaging in conversation where their content is landing.

I have written before about why I do not use auto-tweeting tools like Reader2Twitter, because I take as much effort as possible to attribute my sources. If you are using such tools, it makes sense to auto-tweet to a different Twitter account, like some folks do. This gives your followers the choice whether to follow you on Reader or Twitter.

Enter Buzz and FriendFeed and Facebook. Each of these is capable of pulling items from multiple sources for each person. FriendFeed can further be imported into Facebook and Buzz. This is not just aggregation, it is super-aggregation or aggregation-squared. This amplifies signals to such enormous proportions that all this noise is deafening.

Each of my shares on Twitter, Reader, and Facebook are hand-picked and manual. It takes extra effort but I believe it adds value to those who follow me. I am happy not being a social media superstar with thousands of followers if even a single person likes a single share of mine in a day. My value is not in the number of retweets, number of likes, etc., but in the feedback I get from even a single @reply or comment.

Neither of the companies behind each of these social networks are working with each other to design better filters for all of us. Each simply wants us to use them exclusively. There lies the problem. We hop on to each new social network bandwagon, immediately discover tools that allow us to auto-share and auto-propagate our shared content down stream, up stream, cross stream, life stream, etc., ultimately drowning our followers in the flood.

I am skeptic this problem will go away soon. As a curator, this is a challenge. The only way I see to successfully filter the signal out of this noise is to be brutal in curating sources. Auto-sharers, auto-tweeters, auto-feeders, or whatever these tools are called, will be the first on my radar as likely candidates to be unfollowed.

As a follower, I am a human. When you auto-share, you’re not a human on that network, you turn into a bot. Bots are what we call spam.

Tagged with: buzz • curation • facebook • google reader • noise • signal • social networks • Twitter

Tracking the Google vs. Facebook Race

On February 2, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

On this blog, I have been keenly observing the race between Google and Facebook towards a relevant real-time, opining earlier that Google Social Search is likely to win in the long run.

New developments in this race:

Google Social Search came out of labs into Open Beta, but made little use of your Facebook social graph.
Facebook’s response? No new features, just a simple blog post detailing how you can personalize it as a news reader. Marshall Kirkpatrick details why it’s likely to succeed.

This race is not about reading news, but whether you spend more time searching on Google or browsing Facebook. It is about whether you seek out information on the web, or prefer to consume interesting content shared by your friends.

Opinions from the blogosphere lie at both ends of the spectrum. Scoble talked about the expanding Google reef with anticipation, while Mark Hopkins asks if we should give up on Google as a social entity. Others reveal Google’s stealth social network and speculate on a Facebook phone. And while this post was being written, Scoble has discussed how Google is taking on both Apple and Facebook and is rooting for them to win.

Google’s Social Challenge

Will Google’s approach to social networking work? Will Google’s SWAT team help? See these 5 observations about the difference between Facebook and Google Social Search. As expected, when it comes to Search, Google has the upper edge in relevancy. But the problem?

Remember the iPad demo? Steve Jobs demoed Facebook, not Google Search. Engagement on social networks is affecting the search business, as Tac Anderson observed. The rest of them use computers because their friends do, and they do that to see what their friends on Facebook are up to, not to search for information on Google.

Another issue with the Google Social Circle is that Facebook and other social networks have conditioned people into adding friends. How do I add a friend to my Google Social Circle? Expect a backlash from some people: “Google doesn’t allow me to choose my friends, or friends of friends”. Google’s Social Circle is a concept that may appeal only to geeks. If users are dissatisfied with their social search results, they’ll turn to Facebook and ask their friends. That will be much simpler than trying to understand and tweak your social circle.

Google is walking on thin ice here, while Facebook is on firm ground.

Facebook’s Challenge?

It is obvious that Facebook has already won the social networking war. It is years ahead of Google in the social race. So has it won the war? Not yet.

Google is years ahead of Facebook in making money and running a steady profitable business.

Why is this important? Because Facebook and Twitter will always be crappy businesses, says the founder of Tripod, Bo Peabody, in a not-surprisingly unpopular post. Risk averse advertisers stick with tried-and-tested search advertising, and are hesitant with social networks where content is not controlled and businesses have to confront real-time negativity. Even high-profile users are complaining about obnoxious ads in social networks.

Who Will Win?

Search vs. Discovery, Seeking Information vs. Following People, are all different terms for the same two sides of the coin. My take is that both will continue to remain important and popular ways of accessing the web. This leaves room for both Facebook and Google to coexist and profit.

Facebook has a long way to go before it is a sustainable business, while Google has a long way to go in the social web. I am on Google’s side, because I distrust Facebook (for e.g. it’s non-portable data portability), and support Google’s SWAT team.

Tagged with: facebook • google

Facebook’s Non-Portable Data Portability

On January 11, 2010, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

A few thoughts about Zuckerberg’s revelations about changes in Facebook privacy, how it relates to data portability, and why this matters.

Facebook is officially part of the Data Portability project. Neither does Facebook allow you to backup or archive your data, nor does it permit any third-party applications to do so. If Facebook was so far using user privacy as an excuse for not allowing data portability, that excuse no longer exists. If Zuckerberg worried about his credibility at all, we should soon see legitimate ways of exporting your Facebook social graph. But obviously, we won’t.

When you own the world’s largest social network with over 350m people, credibility is not an issue.

Facebook supports Data Portability. Surprised? Facebook’s implementation of data portability is called Facebook Connect (italics mine):

These are just a few steps Facebook is taking to make the vision of data portability a reality for users worldwide. We believe the next evolution of data portability is about much more than data. It’s about giving users the ability to take their identity and friends with them around the Web, while being able to trust that their information is always up to date and always protected by their privacy settings.

We look forward to working with other leading identity providers to develop the best policies and standards for enabling the portability and protection of users’ information.

In contrast, the Data Portability Project’s vision is: “Data portability enables a borderless experience, where people can move easily between network services, reusing data they provide while controlling their privacy and respecting the privacy of others.”

By allowing Facebook to claim that it’s part of the data portability project while preventing any data from being ported anywhere outside it’s walled garden, Facebook is making a mockery of open standards. Should groups like the Data Portability Project expel Facebook from its ranks?

Louis Gray has highlighted the issues we have faced for two decades because we did not have OS and Application-neutral data, but were locked-in to the Apple/Microsoft/Google ‘big-three’ silos. In the coming decades, the data that holds the greatest wealth is your social graph data. And instead of big-three, just one company is well on its way to owning it, controlling it, and making money off it.

Tagged with: data portability • facebook • privacy

The Race Towards A Relevant Real-Time

On December 13, 2009, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

I have written earlier about the advantage Google has over Facebook in achieving relevance in real-time. There have been many interesting developments since:

The battle for online identity intensified with the fight between Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect.
Facebook changed its privacy strategy but later retracted making Friend Lists public.
Google introduced real-time search.
Google Suggest included instant answers and universal search results.
Twitter declared that it will open its firehose to all developers.
Most importantly, Google personalized everyone’s search results, something that deserves extraordinary attention says Danny Sullivan.

Looking at these developments together, it is clear that both Facebook and Google want to become indispensable by providing you with relevant information in real-time.

This race is becoming a war. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg had mentioned a “shift from an information economy to a social economy”. Mike Arrington clearly understands this war, as he asked Google’s VP Marrissa Mayer about moving from search to discovery of content via social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Quite predictably, Mayer talked about Google Social Search and Real-Time search in response.

My thoughts:

Facebook is on a quest for Searchability, Google is on a quest for Relevancy. Facebook has already pocketed relevancy with its social network, while Google has already pocketed search. Real-time is no longer a technological challenge.

Google is taking an algorithmic approach to social relevancy. Google’s personalized search results and enhancements to Google Suggest reveal its algorithmic approach to finding relevance in the absence of its social network. Because you do not have friends in Google, it is using your browsing patterns, Twitter follows, and search patterns of billions of its users to ascertain what may be socially relevant to you.

Steve Rubel predicted that Google will start promoting Google Profiles heavily. In the meantime, with personalized search results, Google has a stealth profile of everyone already.

Facebook keeping Friend Lists private may be to retain its exclusive access to your social graph, rather than a response to privacy criticism. Facebook must realize that if it hands over your social graph to public search engines, Google will have a huge lead in this race. I suspect that its retraction has more to do with continuing to be a strategic player in this race, and less with privacy. At the minimum, Facebook should expect significant financial benefits out of sharing Friend List information.

Twitter wants to be equated with real-time information. With Twitter opening up its data, expect Facebook apps to work with Twitter. Search engines are already integrating Twitter like mad. Whether you are a user, search engine, application or developer, Twitter wants to be your real-time channel. Kent asked why does Real Time always equate to Twitter? Because that’s exactly what Twitter wants to be.

Tagged with: facebook • google • real-time • Twitter

Why Google Social Search Will Beat Facebook

On October 28, 2009, in Social Web, by Mahendra Palsule

There has been a lot of excitement over Google introducing Social Search as an experimental feature in Labs. Facebook COO Sandberg is also often quoted in this context, saying that “the web is moving from an information economy toward a social economy”. It is clear that both Google and Facebook want to be the platform that brings you relevant search results from people you trust. Who will win this battle?

Let us discount Microsoft and Bing for the moment, as they’re yet to catch up with Google in any case. Marshall Kirkpatrick over at the ReadWriteWeb says no one is the clear winner, but Facebook may have the strongest hand. On the other hand, Robert Scoble says Facebook is the biggest loser in the Twitter search deals.

Among the several factors at play here, such as who has the larger user base, the most important are Relevancy and Recency. Social Search will not be useful unless it is also Real-Time, and Real-Time Search will not be useful unless it is filtered by Social Relevancy.

Today, I follow several people on various social networks, who make up my “social circle”. The problem is not everyone uses the same social network for the same purpose. I follow some people on Google Reader as they share great content there, but I don’t follow them on Twitter, because they tweet mundane stuff I don’t care about. And vice versa.

This is just an example. The point is, a social contact or friend in one network doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is a relevant contact in another network. Today, I have the flexibility of deciding whether a friend is a worthwhile contact to connect on Twitter, Google Reader, YouTube, LinkedIn, Disqus, Digg/StumbleUpon, Goodreads, Last.fm, and so on. Facebook doesn’t give me this flexibility. Making friends on Facebook means I get noise from all the social activity of a contact, much of which may not at all be relevant to me.

Now consider Google Social Search. Because I follow different people in different social networks, Google knows not just who matters to me, but when and in what context. A friend I follow on Goodreads is relevant when I am searching something about books, but irrelevant when I am searching for breaking tech news. Google has the intelligence to apply relevancy to my social search. Facebook doesn’t.

Facebook Groups may try to emulate these different social networks, but I don’t think it likely that they can achieve the rich functionality developed by each of them for specific networks like books, music, etc.

Human beings on earth did not coalesce into one gigantic country, but segregated into multiple countries with their own culture and language. Eric Schmidt says that within five years, the Internet will be dominated by Chinese language content. We humans are social indeed, but not to the extent that we all congregate within one gigantic silo. Social networks on the web ultimately reflect social networks in real life. Google’s platform understands and accepts that, Facebook doesn’t. That’s why Google will not just remain relevant in the “social economy”, it has clear advantages over Facebook in winning the battle.

Tagged with: facebook • google • social search

Skeptic Geek

Impartial Observations on Technology and the Social Web