

This must be Google's Facebook clone. It sure looks like it. - aj700
https://profiles.google.com/

======
citricsquid
I don't think google will ever win at social, every site that started small
changed and adapted to what the users wanted, google can't do that, they
launch a new site and bam millions of users instantly; yet all these users
want different things, so instead of shaping the experience around what they
need to _get_ users (what Facebook did) they're catering to what they _think_
will retain users. They have to find out what users want without the access to
"organic" information, market research is proven time and time again to be
worthless.

The problem of getting users is often one that defines a site, when you don't
have that problem it becomes a battle to stop users leaving to better more
"mature" pastures. I think the next big social site (if there ever is one)
will be a no-name small-gone-big site, but even then with how everyone (users)
is about social now (they want to be instantly in on the next big thing) I
doubt that can happen. I think that maybe Facebook is the end of social sites,
which feels strange and ridiculous to say, but maybe.

Google will never "get" social, there is nothing _to_ get.

Edit: in fact I think a great example of this is Google Wave. It was a
fantastic product for a variety of tasks, project management was one, yet
Google pitched it as the "next big thing" to users so they all joined with
ridiculous expectations of what it was and wasn't and now look what
happened... Tumblr is another great example in the other direction, what the
site is now is very community orientated, yet from the interviews I've seen
with the founder (David something) it didn't seem as if this was intention
from the get go, yet users used the site like that and so they adapted and
enabled users to use it like that. Now look, they're _huge_. Does anyone know
of any products launched by big companies (Google, Microsoft etc.) that did go
big? I can't think of any off hand, would be interesting to look at how they
grew and developed.

~~~
tensor
I thought Orkut (by google) did amazingly well in some parts of the world?

[http://www.labnol.org/wp/images/2008/02/social-networks-
popu...](http://www.labnol.org/wp/images/2008/02/social-networks-
popularity.gif)

~~~
justanotheratom
Google did not create Orkut, it was acquired.

~~~
nl
No, Google created Orkut.

 _In 2003, Google offered to purchase the social network Friendster, but the
offer was declined by that company. Google then internally commissioned Orkut
Büyükkökten to work on a competing independent project. The result was Orkut.
The product launched on January 24, 2004._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut#History_of_orkut>

(If it isn't clear from that quote, Orkut Büyükkökten was a Google employee)

~~~
code_duck
They named it after an individual? How odd. It's like Facebook being called
Zuckbook.

------
seancron
No, it's the updated Google Profiles as discussed previously:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2282094>
([http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2011/03/decide-what-
worl...](http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2011/03/decide-what-world-sees-
when-it-searches.html))

And as I said in the previous discussion, the reason profile pages tend to use
the same layout is because it's an established design pattern now. People
already know what to expect when they see a page with that layout.

~~~
esmevane
Thank you for the links. I saw this post and thought, "Isn't this old news?"
Maybe not, but I could have sworn I saw something in this vein weeks ago.

~~~
patrickaljord
To be fair it happened 4 days ago.

~~~
dmix
This is the internet, damnit.

------
paolomaffei
If the headline "Decide what the world sees when it searches for you." means
that when someone search a name+surname profiles.google.com will always be top
I see this as quite powerful!

~~~
Kylekramer
That has be Google's social trump card. If they ever pull the trigger on that,
that is a real Facebook competitor (Actually, seems more like LinkedIn
competitor now that I think about it). I always like the rumored branding of
Google Me for this reason.

Of course, they are getting some heat for the OneBox stuff they do, so there
is some danger there.

~~~
prawn
Only if you want everyone Googling your profile straight up. In an era when
people worry about colleagues, employers and stalkers discovering their public
profiles and photos too easily, I'm not sure if this will be useful for
everyone rather than self-promoters, SEOers, etc.

I think your mention of LinkedIn is closer to the mark.

------
supervillain
Google's ubiquitous and omnipresent ways of doing things will win it's way on
social.

It's kinda crude, but I think Google's plan is to make Google Profile (aka
Facebook clone) ubiquitous and omnipresent blurring the line going to a social
networking site and just searching for that person.

Kinda like Microsoft's thing with Windows 98 when everything can be used as
Internet Explorer.

~~~
mindcrime
I think you're onto something. Google won't "win at social" by setting up
something that looks like Facebook and being a "better Facebook." And neither
will anybody else, most likely. But they _can_ "win at social" by simply
continuing to link their various services together more and more and more, and
gradually introducing more "social" features.

When you look at what Google have with GMail, Google Calendar, Reader, Buzz,
Docs, and their other properties, they have a great foundation to build useful
"social" stuff. But remember, "social" doesn't necessarily mean "just like
Facebook" (or Twitter, or whoever.)

And I still think that a few fairly minor (IMO) tweaks to Buzz would make it
an awesome product that could gain a lot more traction.

------
rome
The reason I don't use Google profiles is that I have no reason to. A public
facing, Facebook like site? No thanks.

I wasn't interested in Facebook until a real life friend from another state
invited me. That's Facebook's draw for me; interaction with real friends and
family.

------
andrewcooke
public profiles have existed for a long time. this isn't new.

~~~
lucasr
Although the feature itself is not new, the new design does seem to be highly
inspired by Facebook's.

~~~
magicalist
actually, if you go to this video from a year ago, you can see that this
year's Facebook redesign was rather reminiscent of the old Google profiles:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYf5iSA6t6g&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYf5iSA6t6g&feature=player_detailpage#t=25s)

~~~
uxp
They all seem to be reminiscent of MySpace, er I mean Hi5, or maybe I mean
Friendster. Point being, a "profile" page has a standard design, the same way
a e-commerce catalog page has a general layout that nearly every shopping cart
employs.

~~~
magicalist
yeah, I went for the snark, but I think your point is much closer to the
truth.

------
farlington
I logged in to check out my own, ancient Google profile (which I just about
barely set up—bare minimum of info and hadn't logged in since the day I'd
heard of it) to discover that has a picture in it that I'd never given Google
permission to use. I'm sure they got it from Adium (I use gchat with Adium),
but I found it creepy to have my profile given a picture without my knowledge
or permission.

~~~
thewordis
I'm fairly certain that Google does not pull the picture from Adium, rather,
Adium pushes the picture to Google.

------
yaix
Google is for search. That's what people know.

As long as Google published apps under their Google brand, they will not fly.

The popular servics Google has (Blogger, YouTube, etc) run all under their own
brand.

If Google seriously wants to make a social network, it must run under its own
brand/domain. And they should give it a little more attention than they did
with Orkut.

I don't think the problem it Google not "getting" the "social". Its about not
creating a distinguishable brand. Google is search.

------
ph0rque
Now if only I could import my downloaded facebook info into there...

------
yr
Is it not a terrible name "Google Profiles" for facebook killer ?

------
aj700
I posted this because I was shocked by how facebook-like it is. The buzz tab
is there if buzz is enabled it seems. You prob have to turn it off entirely to
kill the tab.

I turned buzz off the day it launched. So I was more surprised that it now
look exactly like a facebook wall.

Some nice differences. You don't have to choose between male and female. But
the relationship field has the same choices. Sadly, there is still no "X is
currently shagging | fucking | etc Y" option. That's more like what I want to
say. Pick your own damn transitive verb.

It's got the lame and prudish "X is in a relationship with Y" as ever.

------
missinglink
I think "decide what the world sees when it searches for you" is a very good
concept. You can expose yourself without having to worry about privacy. I
wouldn't want to make my Facebook profile available to everyone.

------
simonh
The problem is Google isn't hungry. They don't make these things work because
they don't have to. AdSense will always put food on the table, so they don't
have the sense of urgency to fix this. It's a common problem for companies
that already have a cash cow and then try to develop or acquire secondary
services, e.g. Yahoo with Delicious. They don't have the sense of urgency,
executive focus and the commitment to make them work.

~~~
yzhengyu
Hunger has little to do with it. Actually, to understand why Google is unable
to succeed, you have to understand Facebook's incremental approach to
integrating real life social groups. Facebook started out by targeting the
college demographic, then established organizations (companies and other
organizations) and eventually opening to the public.

[ Another reason for Myspace's failures - after the initial inbound success,
they didn't focus at all. On anything. ]

I can't see Google treading down the same road using the same old approach,
i.e. building an app, releasing it as a beta to try out with the masses, etc.
They would have more success trying social out with the organizations which
use their Enterprise apps. Disclaimer: I don't use Google Enterprise
offerings, so I have no idea if they already have one there.

~~~
rmrm
my company uses Google Apps. It absolutely astounds me that both Buzz and Wave
weren't launched first as Enterprise Apps, _only_. They both would have been
useful as enterprise collaboration and communication tools, and having it be
entirely within an organization solves the "who can I talk to" problem -- much
like Facebook did by targeting college campuses. As a average schmoe -- I have
zero reason to use Buzz, for anything. Get everyone in my company on it, and
I'd be using it every day. Everyone would. And it's actually a great tool for
that, it would solve problems that aren't addressed well by either email or
the various internal wikis.

I'm actually still a little pissed Buzz hasn't shown up...more than a year
after Google said "Yes, Buzz is certainly coming to Apps."

It's just a little bit mind boggling to me -- it seems so obvious. From what I
understand, Buzz was (is?) used inside of Google for internal
communication/discussion. THAT is _the_ use case for it. But they launched for
something else, and ignored what would have been a great starting point for
the product to gain some momentum and a community of users who would go out
and sell it later on.

~~~
zmmmmm
Buzz is one of the most mismanaged products I've ever seen.

In particular its presence on Android is laughable which is just ...
inexplicable. Other than being afraid of a law suit of some kind (which would
be bizarre given what else Google puts on Android) I just can't understand why
they haven't put Buzz front and center there.

My pet conspiracy theory is that Google has done some kind of deal with
Twitter whereby they have agreed not to compete in certain ways in order to
get favorable treatment wrt search.

------
lazylland
I think they should have gone for an about.me/flavors.me presentation . If
anything, just to pull away from the facebook look.

~~~
jlees
But then all the comments on HN would be about how Google is copying the *.me
sites and squishing poor innocent startups. :(

~~~
Andrex
Besides that, the look they have now is a little more fitting with the spartan
Google theme than a big flashy about.me knockoff would be. It works.

~~~
lazylland
No doubt, it works. Just that the resemblance with facebook is so strong,
(right down to the grid placements), that it looks 'weak'.

------
jgalvez
In Brazil, it was translated as "Google Perfis". Bad bad bad. Facebook is a
single brand across all countries. Google should keep a single brand as well,
even "Google Profiles" would be better than "Google Profiles" translated in
every language possible.

------
aik
My Buzz tab was completely public by default. That's annoying.

~~~
robotron
"This does not change who can see the posts - private posts stay private."

------
mapster
Facebook already serves as a personal wiki for name searches. Will Google rank
Google profiles higher than Facebook results for a given name?

------
hoag
Speaking of which, has anybody tried google.com/health? Or how about the cool
WebGL-powered site bodybrowser.googlelabs.com?

------
there
i thought orkut was google's facebook clone?

~~~
moultano
Orkut launched a month before facebook, not that it matters now.

[http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=facebook%2Corkut...](http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=facebook%2Corkut&date=1%2F2004%2049m&cmpt=q)

------
zaidf
Do I see a "Buzz" tab?

 _shakeshead_

~~~
seancron
Why should Google not have a Buzz tab?

Edit: Also, you can show or hide the tab. So if you don't use Buzz and you
don't want that tab shown on your profile, just hide it. However, this way
Google can let their users that still use Buzz display it on their profile.

~~~
zaidf
Buzz symbolizes everything wrong with Google's social strategy. They need to
move on.

Linking to dead properties and adding a few fields isn't going to fix social.

~~~
moultano
What does it mean for a product to "symbolize" something? Is it the product
you are objecting to or the branding?

(There are also pockets of really high quality activity on buzz. See Terence
Tao's very active feed for instance:
<https://profiles.google.com/u/0/114134834346472219368/buzz> )

~~~
zaidf
It's a product with very little traction and an inferior experience to what's
already in the market(twitter, fb).

Unfortunately pockets of traction for a product as old as Buzz means very
little. Social for big guys like fb and google is about scale, not niches.

~~~
magicalist
it depends on what you mean by "experience." I think buzz is easily superior
to twitter, but I use twitter because the community I engage with is there.

does the existence of picasa's online albums somehow harm google because only
some people use them?

~~~
alanh
Here’s my discussion on the Buzz user experience, from a year ago.
<http://alanhogan.com/buzz-is-already-dead>

(tl;dr: Too distracting, not very skimmable, awkward social aspects including
too many non-friends showing up.)

