
Cloning Is Lame. Google Should Do It To Facebook Anyway. - alexandros
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/29/google-clone-facebook/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
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k33n
> And that’s why it’s time for Google to just plane clone Facebook.

What's a plane clone, Michael Arrington?

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stcredzero
A 2-dimensional clone?

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ulysses
Wow, that'd be pretty useful terminology. Most clones, particularly of the
"programmed a version of foo site in just 7 hours" type, are indeed
2-dimensional clones, just copying the look without implementing the
underlying complexity.

"Plane clone" is definitely in my vocabulary, now.

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kyoji
So the author spends half the article talking about how lame and counter-
productive cloning is, ie "...Instead they tweak a little here, add a little
there, and launch it as a variation of the original. That’s evolution, not
stealing." then goes on to say that's Google's only choice?

I don't believe it. Google wasn't first to market with apps like Gmail or
Google Docs, but their implementation is arguably much better than the
competition. Why cant Google do this with social networking?

He says: "What Google shouldn’t do – must not do – is try to tie the service
to other Google products for the wrong reasons." This makes no sense. I think
a social networking service that utilized Google's other services effectively
would be a very powerful thing. I could see tight integration between events
and your Google calender, or sharing Google docs/waves easily with friends.
Google has a massive portfolio of very useful services; it would be foolhardy
to not use them if they were to attempt a "Facebook clone" as the author so
lovingly calls it.

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Keyframe
_... in truly open data with simple export tools and easy to understand
privacy settings. I’d recommend going with the Twitter model on privacy – it’s
all public or it’s all private (for approved friends only). It’s not hard to
understand, and very few people actually choose the private option._

I see person who wrote this doesn't have much contact with females, especially
female groups and their behavior on facebook. "This is public, this I only
want some to see, this can be viewed by my friends but not that bitch"...

Hell I don't understand those privacy settings on facebook, but I sure know
every female I know knows them and knows how to use it.

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storm
I'm skeptical of the assumption made in so many of these articles: that Google
will surely be annihilated by Facebook if they don't act quickly to usurp
their social networking crown.

Social networks come, and social networks go. Sure, Facebook is run rather
more competently than, say, MySpace ever was. But it isn't at all clear how
big uniques and a whole lot of people playing Farmville equate to being a
contender for Google-killing internet domination. I suspect that a lot of this
breathless punditry is going look very silly ~5 years from now.

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benpbenp
> Facebook’s self serve ad business is exploding, say our sources, and _may be
> significantly more robust than even the most favorable third party forecasts
> predict._

Is it just me or is this a silly, meaningless sentence. Are you predicting it
is more robust? Then that makes _you_ the most favorable third party. If not,
and if you have no evidence to offer, then why mention this mere possibility?

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stcredzero
Some young outlaw hacker needs to make a name for himself (herself?) by open-
source publishing a perfectly undetectable screen-scraper for Facebook that
outputs all of a user's data in an open format as XML or JSON.

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theBobMcCormick
That wouldn't address the major problems with Facebook, which is

A) That _Facebook_ would still have your personal data and would possibly
still be misusing it.

B) For most people, Facebook still has the largest "critical mass" of your
friends, family, etc., which makes it difficult to pointless to move to a
different social networking site.

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stcredzero
A) Too late to do anything about the data Facebook already has. Long Term
Solution: a network the users control.

B) If there is another site that's painless to migrate to, then this isn't an
issue. That's why such an outlaw tool would be useful.

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roc
> _"a network the users control"_

Yeah, see, that's the trick. The users _don't want to_. They explicitly
_abdicated_ control when they signed up to Facebook. They knew what they were
doing. They know that they can get games and chat and publishing and status
messages without Facebook.

And they know that using Facebook requires giving them access to all sorts of
data they might sell to... well, anyone willing to pay. Of course, so
could/does Google. And Amazon. And their ISP. And their phone company. And
their credit card company.

If users cared about control, they'd still be using email and blogs and
separate accounts for separate services from separate vendors, etc. Like we
few holdouts.

But you simply cannot make a social network site _work_ without giving away a
shocking quantity of data. You either get something that works like Facebook
(warts and all) or something that works like hotmail+yahoo
games+classmates.com+icq+flickr+twitter

Users already chose. I think they chose wrong, but no Facebook-knockoff
offering 'control' is going to change it. They _want_ the integration and
ease-of-use that _requires_ Facebook have access to all that data.

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stcredzero
_Yeah, see, that's the trick. The users don't want to. They explicitly
abdicated control_

I think this is more a function of a lack of viable alternatives, where
viability includes the functionality that comes from the network effect. The
trick, of course is not to replace Facebook, but to become a hipster adjunct
to Facebook.

 _But you simply cannot make a social network site work without giving away a
shocking quantity of data._

You only have to give data away to your friends to make it work for _you_.
Giving your data to the world (or to the part of it willing to pay) is only
required for advertisers.

 _Users already chose. I think they chose wrong, but no Facebook-knockoff
offering 'control' is going to change it. They want the integration and ease-
of-use that requires Facebook have access to all that data._

The way to supplant Facebook is by _not_ supplanting it. Become the defacto
primary social tool for an influential subset of society -- a useful adjunct.
If such a tool can be made, it will benefit from Facebook's network and not
suffer from competing with it. The key is to grow out from a hipster/youth
demographic and peacefully coexist for awhile. Once that is established, then
go in for the kill by giving users things Facebook cannot or will not --
Facebook certainly has these weaknesses.

Imagine a tool that allows a hipster to stay in Facebook, but network with a
subset of her/his graph with complete information control and privacy,
_conveniently and without duplicated effort_. That would be killer and also
very hard for FB to duplicate, as it runs counter to their DNA.

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dotcom
Don't waste you precious energy to worry about 'what should somebody do' ;-)
Have a cold beer, go for a walk think about yourself ;-) Google won't change
the world if we don't buy it...

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robryan
I think something they should do is separate it as Bing is with microsoft.
Similar to how Chrome is done, it's cross advertised but most of it's function
is Google independent.

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yummyfajitas
Google already did clone facebook.

<http://www.orkut.com>

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bombs
Orkut launched two weeks before Facebook.

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stcredzero
They could Re-architect Orkut so that it can run P2P and give the result to
Diaspora.

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chengas123
I'm so sick of hearing about Diaspora. These kids don't have any product yet
and as far as I can tell there is no reason to expect what they're building
will be successful.

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stcredzero
_These kids don't have any product yet and as far as I can tell there is no
reason to expect what they're building will be successful._

Most of the challenge will be in marketing. If they can get a hipster fringe
to adopt it and give them real value, they can use this to bootstrap
themselves. (Much as Facebook did with the college crowd.)

