

Google's Social Strategy - rrhoover
http://cdixon.org/2011/04/10/googles-social-strategy/

======
codelust
Actually, it is essential for Facebook to have its content crawl-able by
everyone - which is why there is the constant push towards downplaying
privacy. A quick look at Facebook on both Compete and Alexa says that they get
~8% of their referral traffic from Google alone (the search engine is also
their largest referral traffic source) and the Google properties together
contribute referral traffic in double digit percentages.

"Social" itself is not a product. It is almost like gasoline - by itself
either product does not give you any value, but use it as a fuel or an enabler
and it takes on a different form. Facebook's enablement is primarily through
connections (the gateway drug) and later it transforms itself into a tool to
easily eat up plenty of your time at varying levels of interaction/engagement.
As much as Google wants to tap into these primary and secondary objectives now
owned by Facebook, Facebook itself would want to move beyond these two.

Facebook has to eventually become the arbiter of transactions online, which
has to be a full-on solution than the teetotaler approach taken on FB credits.
That would, though, expose Facebook to higher standards on privacy. But, if
they manage that, Google can be easily overrun.

For Google, "social" cannot be force-fed. "+1" is such an eyesore and is such
a horrible effort at branding your social interaction touchpoint for the
masses.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Facebook downplayed privacy for advertising. The ability to target individuals
for ads and price based on per-person impressions (Joey, 18, has seen this
Cola ad 14 times in the last week) is their best opportunity to make Google-
money. CTR is always going to be low on Facebook, but impressions are still
valuable if they create brand awareness, in the same way that television ads
are valuable. But the ability to track ad campaigns at the individual level
sets Facebook apart, and that's why privacy had to go.

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javanix
I really think that incorporating the +1 button into their actual rankings
would cause Google more grief than it is worth.

It would be like a built-in spamming vector for any less-than-legitimate site
out there.

~~~
rrhoover
Google has built one of the most successful email spam filters and they've
arguably done a decent job at cracking down on link farms and other black-hat
SEO tactics. They'll certainly have more work to do but I don't think they'll
have a problem identifying spam or fake "+1's". Historical user behavior and
other signals will help them filter out spammers. Additionally, Google will
likely emphasize +1's from your friends and my guess is most of us aren't
friends with spammers.

~~~
magicalist
Agreed. Twitter is completely inundated with spam and I consider trending
topics to generally be among the worst examples of human expression, and yet I
love twitter and use it constantly because I only see updates from people I
follow.

google's "social" search results don't show up that often for me, but when
they do, the little icon and note that says "so-and-so has shared this link"
make me look at that link first because a) google has matched it to my query
and b) so-and-so liked it enough to share it on twitter (and +1 now? not sure
if it's working yet).

This mostly works for me for searches about programming, since that is the
community I follow on twitter, but it does a great job of separating wheat
from chaff and helping me stumble upon related cool things. _Hopefully_ they
don't screw this up and I can get similar benefits for other topics/related
communities.

------
eiji
I tend to believe it's not a race anymore, and having a strategy is the start
of the end. Google should utilize it's manpower on something visionary.

I guess I wait for the time, Neal Stephenson's metaverse becomes reality. With
all the expertise in gmaps, search and scale, add some kinect to the mix, and
buy second life for a change, and you could get very close.

Create a new exciting virtual place/space, and the crowd will show up. I can
only hope they are working on something good. Just another gmail feature, or
some +1 clutter in my search window will not fix this. Google was never the
fun place on the web, only a tool to get a job done, and with every year, that
brand become more of burden to even enter anything social.

~~~
Chocobean
Why is it not a race anymore? Even if you're Hussein Bolt, the race is still
on: set new records, challenge others, show boat. And why is "having a
strategy the start of the end"? You seem to imply that it isn't because
Google's strategy is flawed, but that having any kind of strategy is a sign of
the end times. Surely all organizations, even a colony of bacteria, will need
a strategy.

------
nikcub
I can't imagine Ballmer telling the Office or Windows groups that their
bonuses this year depend on how well Bing is doing

bad move

------
M8R-jt5iq1
Two comments on Google's focussing on social.

First - Bonuses? For many developers bonuses are not motivators, or not as
great a motivator, as ego boosting recognition. (Don't have sources for this
at hand).

Second - Social is what Facebook does/is. It is not a secondary goal, a
necessity in a strategic space. For example, there was Google notebook. It
withered, but evernote keeps going. Notes everywhere is what evernote does/is.

We've seen this play before: a company becomes dominant in a particular field,
upstarts are innovating elsewhere, dominant company chooses to respond. Film
at 11.

------
Apocryphon
Once again I ask: if Google fails to understand "social" the same way
Microsoft in the '90s failed to understand the internet, what will Facebook
fail to understand?

~~~
thailandstartup
They already fail to understand Privacy - but maybe that's more of a bet that
it is an old fashioned concept. Maybe they'll fail to understand Social
Compartmentalization - I don't want everyone in my life to know everyone else.
Maybe that's just my old fashioned ways too.

But my bet - they'll fail to understand Location.

The next big thing is Location, Location, Location!

~~~
Raphael
Not likely. Facebook took over the location database for Foursquare some time
ago.

~~~
thailandstartup
Yep, I'm pretty sure they're aware of Location, and they may be the best
placed and biggest player right now. None of that is a guarantee for the
future. The possibility is a new player can come along and understand Location
in a way Facebook doesn't.

------
felix0702
IMHO, what Google need are

1\. HTML5-based cloud address book app with ease of adding new friends and
separating friends into few categories on any mobile phones.

2\. decentralized social graph database with no personal information attached,
only IDs and relationships in the graph DB.

3\. lots social plug-ins which can utilize the graph DB so that any web
developers can build their own little facebook for different context.

------
dpatru
Rather than build a site where users go to, I think Google should do for the
Internet what Microsoft did for desktops and focus on helping developers to 1)
easily build sites that users love and 2) make money. Google already does this
with app engine, adsense, oauth, maps, youtube, checkout, android, site
search, etc, but it can do more.

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latch
Facebook has so much momentum, it's hard to imagine anyone competing with them
head-on. X will stay on Facebook because that's where [A, B, C] are, and B
isn't going to switch because that's where......

I would guess that the only way to compete against Facebook is to target
smaller, more specialized kinds of social and try to bring them together.
Also, they need to focus on under-served markets (women, emerging markets,
elderly). If they can get to these before Facebook does, they'll create the
same kind of momentum.

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paganel
> Websites care a lot about their Google organic search rankings (which is
> why, for example, helping websites improve their rankings is multibillion-
> dollar industry). A button that improved search rankings would likely get
> prominent placement by many websites.

No way in hell this cannot be spammed to death. No way, I say, Google has
these clever algorithms that make sure that all the search results have a
least a link to about.com on their first page.

------
mkramlich
One thing said in the article that I also agree with, is that it seems almost
inevitable that Google will buy Twitter eventually. Seems like such a good
fit.

------
rorrr
> _Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create
> content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers._

Seriously? I'm yet to see any of my facebook friends to create anything
interesting that google can't crawl. Every single artistic person I know has a
blog or a website. Maybe it's just my friends, but the most creative thing
they do is post a link from reddit or some crappy photo from a party two weeks
ago.

Facebook is such a horrible platform for creative people. Name any creative
area and I will name you a website that beats facebook hands down (in both
community and convenience of posting and reviewing your creations).

~~~
blhack
Facebook doesn't let you input enough information to do anything creative. I
would never, ever write a blog post on my facebook, then link people to it.

Can you even do that?

I would never, ever post anything other than cellphone snapshots into
facebook, their photo UI seems to discourage it as a photograph sharing tool
(snapshot sharing yes, but I don't know anybody that would ditch flickr for
facebook).

Can you upload music to facebook? I don't...think so?

People are creating things, but facebook has no way of categorizing this
stuff, so I don't think people are putting "valuable" things into it, because
they know that they'll never be able to find them again.

The fact that greplin is looked at as such an amazingly exciting tool
illustrates this, I think.

~~~
cdr
I have a fair few less tech savvy Facebook friends who do indeed use FB Notes
as a "blog" - one that people not logged into FB can't even see.

