Google Unveils Profiles, Slowly Chipping Away at Facebook
|
Written By Sepideh Saremi | December 17, 2007 | Share This
|
|
Last month’s reports that email inboxes and personalized homepages would form the crux of Yahoo and Google’s social network strategy are coming closer to fruition - at least, for Google. The leading search engine has recently rolled out several new features that hint at a larger social network strategy, one that will supercede its clunky, existing Orkut and take down Facebook.
Most recently, Google Reader users became automatically subscribed to their Google Talk friends’ shared Google Reader items. And, more important, Google added public, search engine-indexed profiles that users can fill out. The Google Profile is a relatively bare-bones thing: no “favorite music” or “favorite quotes” fields here, just a name, occupation, and 5,000 characters worth of About Me.
This all points to major differences between Google and arguably its biggest social networking rival, Facebook. Google is slowly poising itself to take down Facebook by leveraging the dependency Google users have on Google products and building a social network that integrates those products. In contrast, many of Facebook’s “products,” or applications, are nonessential - the social network’s value comes from the convenience it allows in communicating with friends. The rest is fluff, and as soon as someone (read: Google) duplicates the network’s news feed feature, it’s likely Facebook will lose some steam and users.
Facebook, which tends to annoy its finicky user-base by rolling out features that don’t necessarily have the user’s best interest at heart, should also look to Google when it wants to implement changes to its site. Google is rolling out its own social features methodically, explaining them clearly, and respecting their user-base by saying they will make changes per user feedback. Google’s evolving social network platform will absolutely rival Facebook, and probably sooner than anyone realizes.
Topics: Facebook, Google, Social Media |
interesting post, but I’ll believe it when I see it?!