

Marissa Mayer explains Google’s social strategy, skeptical about Facebook - mvs
http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/05/marissa-mayer-google-social-strategy/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29

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yanw
Misleading headline.

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danielrhodes
Indeed. Mayer neither explained Google's strategy, nor expressed much
skepticism of Facebook.

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phlux
Fluff piece with no info.

Here is the problem that I have with google trying to "go social" (Disclaimer,
I don't have an FB account - so I am not intended target)

First, social apps are designed around the idea that you have a common portal
with which to share information among people you know - or at least have some
common thread with, and interest etc..

They are also inherently services that only work online -- meaning, you don't
get any value out of a standalone desktop app that is not connected to the
activities and information dumping of others.

The services a centered around a user profile, with different containers for
various information about your interests, connections to others and content
you produce such as comments and pictures. Both of which connect you further
to others.

With 500 million users, a platform for delivering apps/games and the prospect
of soon providing voip services, facebook is in the most solid position it can
be in.

Facebook is a walled garden though.

Google should be going after, and seeking to purchase Linkedin. It should stop
worrying about facebook all together here is why:

Google already provides services and technology that better map to corporate
communal needs than casual friendships.

Email, docs, apps, search, indexing appliances, etc are all tools that are
already in use by and supporting of businesses.

Technology infrastructure is a massive expense, and it is for the most part a
liability expense to most companies who's core production is not centered
around technology/data.

If you can provide what is effectively a wholly hosted corporate compute cloud
environment that offers massively popular productivity solutions built on
world class infrastructure know-how then you can affect every small and medium
size business that exists.

Google should focus on business productivity tools and the corporate social
network. By buying linked, and expanding on it's capability - you get the
profile page of the users with extremely useful information.

You can provide the corporate tools of email and document creation.

Provide access to financial processing services (Buy Square) and provide all
the effective suite of business tools required.

You then can provide a channel for all other services to cater to, sell into,
advertise etc.. that business market.

Add features to the Linkedin profiles -- this is a huge one. There are so many
but here is a list of a couple:

You can provide tools that help organizations roll out information and
services to their users. Collaboration and project management and tracking
tools as a part of the Linkedin profile portal.

Distribute training materials to the users, take polls etc.

Facebook can never reach into enterprise - but linkedin and google can. They
can even disrupt it -- with existing offerings better thought out.

You have a layered and tabbed portal. The user profile is the new home
directory. Each department has a tab with which that user can interact with
available information they have access to in that department.

You can quickly form teams that get created around a project - associated
tools and files get tagged to that team as they work on it.

Google buys up small companies that contribute to this ecosystem. Fosters a
platform for business productivity applications and sales.

Provides all the tools necessary for a small company to work, produce, host
and sell their products and services - through a single integrated, hosted
portal.

Doesnt matter what screen you view from, laptop, desktop, mobile etc.. you can
always have a view into your corprate systems and info.

etc.. I think you guys get the idea.

