In The Lord of the Rings, most of the attention is given to the Dark Lord Sauron’s quest to gain control the One Ring. The “one ring to rule them all” has the power to control a set of rings given to the rulers of Middle Earth’s other populations, and through these leaders, their people and cities.
Since Kevin Rose’s short-lived tweet about a new social network called Google Me to compete directly with Facebook a lot of thought has gone into what will set this effort apart from Google’s earlier social attempts. Google Buzz and Orkut have failed to find traction, and while Google Profiles is useful, the site is more a series of islands than a real community.
All of Google’s social services share that island feel, with little interconnectedness and much isolation. Whether this is due to the numerous Google teams or a purposeful decision to stay away from a centralized system, Google has built up a number information silos. It’s possible that Google Me is just a master control page, with access to all Google services in one central location.
Facebook users interact through a few key elements: the Newsfeed, chat, photos, videos, profiles, and apps. Google could roll out a Facebook clone of sorts that could unite a number of their services to match those core Facebook offerings.
Buzz is the obvious centerpiece of a Google Me homepage. Like Facebook and FriendFeed (which was acquired by Facebook), Buzz can import social interactions from other services like Twitter and flickr in addition to acting as a commenting and status updating system. The Buzz pane would be the central feed highlighting all of your news and updates from friends and family.
Google already has a better chat client in Gmail than Facebook what has implemented. With the ability to do text and video chats, the same basic Google Talk widget in Gmail could be relocated to the same spot on the Google Me homepage.
While it is not as popular as flickr, Picasa is a nice photo site and Google Me could simply act as an interface to a Picasa account. This idea would fit nicely with Google’s commitment to openness and their Data Liberation Front – all of your photos would be manageable in a full-featured photo site but still easily shared through your social network in the way most people are used to – the Newsfeed.
YouTube integration would function the same way. Your Google Me account would store your shared videos in your YouTube account and feed that content into your Google Me homepage as you decide to share it. With YouTube’s built-in rating system, people could give videos a thumbs-up while viewing it on Google Me or on YouTube. The video chat function in Google Talk could be rolled into a video chat client or vlogging tool for creating short video updates to share with your friends. Again, because this would be based on YouTube technology the formats are already well accepted in browsers and by users.
While Google Profiles are not an exact replacement for those found on Facebook, they are close enough for a start. Just add a link from the Google Me homepage to the profile and voila, instant profile.
The tricky part for Google could be competing with Facebook applications, but with support for gadgets in Gmail and on iGoogle custom pages this might not be a very difficult addition. Google also has a trick up their sleeves: the Chrome Web Store. At Google I/O an app store was announced, giving us an idea of how applications will work on the upcoming Chrome OS. Because the apps are compatible with other browsers as well, apps on the Web Store could be rolled right into Google Me.
All the parts of an amazing social network are already exist in Google just in pieces. All Google needs to do is create a killer interface where these pieces all work together. Even better for Google, this fits in with their larger Data Liberation Front policies; all the content could be viewable outside of Google Me. Your grandmother wouldn’t need a Google Me account to view your photos or videos because they are really stored on Picasa and YouTube, one short link away. If Kevin Rose’s source knows what they are talking about Google could be much closer to seriously challenging Facebook than anyone thought – it’s hidden in plain sight, just like the One Ring.
Merging them together won’t work, people will then have to automatically have all services… but most people don’t want all the services! (imo)
It’s not a perfect plan, but Google has so much of a “social network” already built I have to think they reuse some of it, even if it’s just repurposed code that creates the same types of services inside Google Me.
While much of want you’ve laid out here will likely come to fruition, I personally feel you’ve missed what will likely be the single greatest focus of Google Me. Mobile and a very deeply intertwined integration within of Android 3.0.
That’s a really good point. With Android and Latitude/Maps the possibilities are endless. Plus I think Google’s music service for Android is debuting in 3.0. It’s going to be an exciting finish to 2010 for Google, that’s for sure.
The one thing that bothers me about this is that I already use Picasa for storing all the photos on my Blogger blogs. If that’s what gets integrated into Google Me, they’ll either have to remove the limit cap or I won’t be sharing any photos at all. Call me cheap, but I don’t feel like upgrading to a paid storage package just to use Google Me effectively.
With Facebook setting the standard of free hosting, albeit at reduced image quality, it’s possible Google would either rearrange or scarp their pricing structure. The ad possibilities alone from a Google managed social network would probably pay for unlimited or a much higher storage ceiling.
do you know when google me will launcing ? which is the main specialitis in google me with face book ?
Unfortunately the only people who know right now are those at Google. :)
You mentioned ChromeOS briefly about applications, but what I feel everyone is missing is what could be a direct link between Me and ChromeOS. ChromeOS is trying to create a web-centric OS, but while still building on the paradigms of a traditional OS such as applications and media management and the like.
A wbesite such as Me would provide the perfect landing page for ChromeOS, instead of something such as iGoogle. The Freedesktop.org standards, as well as recent actions by Microsoft and Apple show that widget-ed information on the desktop is becoming more and more popular, and based on your proposal for Me, that is what the site will be, a central location to funnel the different information silos into one view. The primary difference is that with Me, the silos you propose are primarily silos that google already controls, but with some simple integration with their own Gadgets and widgets standards, Me could be easily become a single interface for managing your online Operating System as represented through ChromeOS.
Just a thought.
Good call. Combined with what Darren is saying about Android integration you’re right. They embrace an open approach to widgets and gadgets which could let people add tons of additional features and connections. Picasa, flickr, and Smugmug could all potentially have a widget, allowing people to import the photo service of their choice.
Dude it just doesnt get much better than Google.
http://www.web-anonymity.au.tc
That’s a fact. I remember how amazed people were back in the day when I told them to use Google instead of Excite, Lycos, and hotbot. And that was “just” search!
LOOOOOOVE IT!!!!! YES! This is the best description of what a social “network” could be I’ve seen yet. It is a true network made up of not only our contacts but of web based services that work both independently and as a whole with full manual controls or a nice automatic function, amazing.
And if anyone can make this happen, it’s Google!
I also think google wave will also be the centre of google me, delivering the news content an updating comments.
I also thought of Me as essentially being a central hub.
This also goes with google strategy over the past year of rebuilding the back end of there services to all operate on the software an to share much of the code base as possible. May be this was not just a case of tidying an cleaning code an making them easier to maintain in the future, but was more about integrating them into google me.
Also what about more advance version of google news alerts, but instead of the users setting individual alerts in for email, they just show up news items in news feed, or google shopping where you can set up google to search an monitor prices of products an send you the best ones.
If done right an google takes time to build theses services in from the beginning an enable easy controls on who sees what then this could be amazing services.
Google search could also enable better searching for people, Facebook is pretty bad in that regard.
As for the google news idea I was meant to say is that about google scanning your messages an profile an sending relevent news on those subjects listed in those profile.
User interface is the key, an despite google recent acquisitions to strengthen this area it still there weak spot.
That’s a great thought David. Wave is tremendously underrated and underused. The basic interface isn’t great but with server federation and the ability to write your own interface there is a lot of tech that could be expanded upon.
I hadn’t even thought about Google News as a social network feature but that makes a lot of sense. When we fill out our profiles and include books, movies and other subjects of interest it would be great for news/alerts to have access to that information should you choose. I search for information about The Hobbit as the movie slowly progresses; it would be great for Google Me to see that I’m interested in The Hobbit and snag a bit of text for me to follow to an article.