

Is Google About to Launch a Facebook Killer? - bwaldorf
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/06/here_we_go_again.php

======
TomOfTTB
At this point I think we can safely say Google is in a perpetual state of
"about to launch a Facebook killer" and will continue to be so until they
actually manage to kill Facebook. So without any details to back it up Kevin
Rose's source is just stating the obvious as far as I'm concerned.

~~~
whughes
I feel like Google is constantly launching Facebook killers and waiting to see
what will stick. They have so many different social networks and feed
mechanisms that it's hard to discern a coherent strategy from them.

------
byoung2
I don't think it's possible to launch a Facebook killer. It is more likely
that some company will launch something that eventually kills Facebook, but we
won't know it is a Facebook killer until afterwards. It's not a matter of
beating them on specs...

~~~
petervandijck
Agreed, can't kill Facebook by copying it. It'd be easier to kill Google by
copying it (less network effects there), and that's pretty much impossible
too.

------
siglesias
I think in the last decade "killer" has become something of a cursed moniker.
The last person to do a string of "killers" was 90's Bill Gates at Microsoft.
When he decided he wanted to take a market, he just took it.

Since then products have almost inevitably become killers sort of by accident,
especially in the fast-moving and uncertain age of the web. Making a killer
thus is kind of like skating to where the puck has been, not where it is
going.

------
jackv
The only way to beat facebook is to out-open them. Facebook thrives on being a
place where users have very tight control over their identities. Watch for
something that strips that control from everyone.

------
bmalicoat
Didn't they launch it before Facebook and haven't they since all but abandoned
it?

www.orkut.com

Also, it didn't start out as a Brazilian social network, not sure where the
article got that.

~~~
code_duck
I assume they are calling it a Brazilian social network because Orkut has done
particularly well in Brazil. 50% of the site's visits come from Brazil, with
the remainder mostly split between the US and India. Orkut is administrated by
Google Brazil since mid-2008.

~~~
blasdel
Before that there was a Brazilian invasion of Fotolog.

Livejournal had a Russian invasion, Flickr had an early invasion of kids from
the U.A.E. and was blocked there for a while, Xanga went asian, Bebo went
British.

You can't really predict how localized network effects will transform a
globally-accessible online community.

~~~
kingsley_20
I have a hard-to-test-theory involving the nodes with high betweenness-
centrality that may explain regional popularity. The "most-connected"
(eigenvector or page-rank) nodes may be much less valuable than the "more-
diversely-connected" nodes (betweenness centrality being a good measure of
this)) in their ability to persuade conversion.

------
aufreak3
... and it looks like facebook will soon launch what sounds like a social
powered question answer site, according to their "beta" recruitment page -
<http://www.facebook.com/product_application/>

Will it be called FaceOverflow?

------
fizx
Hopefully, it does as well as their Twitter killer and their Wikipedia killer.

~~~
kylemathews
I rather like Google Buzz actually and probably now use it 1/5-1/4 as much as
Twitter. It's very simple to use with the great GMail inbox integration and
connects me to a different set of friends vs. Twitter and Facebook.

~~~
zmmz
I believe fizx was referring to Jaiku (twitter competitor) and Knoll
(Wikipedia competitor), not Buzz. both of which failed to rick off.

I think with buzz they are trying to make a service which brings all the
features of the various social networks to one platform, its something between
Facebook (you can "like" stuff), tumblr (judging by the length of the posts
and it allows comments), and twitter.

I have to say that buzz is really nice, and I would use it if it didn't have
the gmail requirement.

------
tremendo
Does Google really see Facebook as a threat? Maybe they could also fund
Diaspora like they helped Mozilla. And it seems to me their "big splash"
launches of late (App Engine, Docs, Wave, Buzz, checkout) end up underwhelming
maybe because of the hype. Their successes (Gmail, maps, text ads) in my
perception were more like "soft" launches in which they let the blogosphere
and geeks in general do their promoting for them.

~~~
skbohra
Diaspora is yet to show up anything, they have created hype though but nothing
visible till date. Google certainly is not going to say anything to be the
facebook killer, they will just introduce something and if that works that's
great, and if that doesn't its just ok, it will not make much difference until
it succeed, failure for Google in this space doesn't make any difference. It
is the advantage of being Google.

------
ElbertF
For a while now Google has been pushing a much need redesign for Orkut (I
don't have it yet, nor have I ever really used the service). I somehow doubt
they're giving up it just yet.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa5xuQZnmtE>

Oh, and wasn't Facebook about to launch a Google killer the other day..?

------
jonursenbach
Protip: Nothing will kill Facebook but Facebook itself.

~~~
angrycoder
You could have said the same thing about Myspace.

------
eddieplan9
Google is fighting too many wars now. They need focus and polish, and to stop
less competed services from degrading.

------
awa
Hmm.. Google already has orkut.com

------
Aaronontheweb
Orkut 2.0: The Reckoning

