The web is a buzz with rumors and tails of Google's newest foray into social media- rumored to be called "google me". Everyone from The Huffington Post to Gizmodo to CNET and Fox News (really??!!)and the BusinessInsider are spreading the rumor. Speculation on Quoro is rampant. Everyone is talking about how it is going to be modeled after Facebook, involving the already pretty well ignored Google Profile page.
Let's face it, if you really love Facebook- you are not leaving. But there are plenty of people who really don't want all the games and apps and money-making annoyances.. they are just there because that is where everyone else is and the only place to find out what they are up to. Unless, of course, all of your friends are on Twitter.. or Flickr... or FriendFeed... or....
The truth is, where Google could make a huge win is modeling their new application into an experiment into virtual - non walled- social networking. What if theywere not being cute, but were being literal with the use of Google Me ( like this movie by Jim Killian in 20007 )
If you Google Me, here is what you get. Notice it contains information about me on Twitter, YouTube, GetGlue, 12Seconds, AmieStreet, geeks.parillo, this Blog, a defunct LiveJournal, and uStream- just on the first page of results. But this is not ( gasp) my only internet incarnation. Use other searches and you find information about me on Facebook, LinkedIn and various professional interactions.
{Google take note: What we do NOT want is an automagic mashing of all the connections and distant hooks about all of our information smashed all together to easily share with everyone. NOT. Repeat, This WILL get you sued. Kthanx }
But what if Google actually learned a lesson from Buzz? What if the infrastructure they are building is a giant permissions/authorization system that allows me to easily create groups, and easily assign contacts to one or more groups, and then to easily assign information feeds from and about me to different groups.And let me hook up all of those incarnations of myself to one big soup.. then let the permissions sort it out when viewed. I don't care if my family sees everything (well, OK maybe not my zivity feeds...), but my work contacts do not need to see my silly family stuff on Facebook, nor my personal Twitter feed. Make this infinitely tuneable and fine- grainable ( gamer friends? semantics fans?) and I promise you a geek-gasm. Better yet, allow me to set group level permissions to certain groups, then semantically tag all that info and allow people who subscribe to me set the tags/keywords they are interested in. A colleague, but only want to see my tech reviews? A friend, but interested in both kids and drinking stories from twitter? A family member, but only want tweet and facebook feeds about family, not about tech? My mind starts to whirl and I realize the potential geek-gasm could be earth shaking. I have seen the future and I want it. ( if it turns out this is NOT what Google is doing with Google Me, could someone else build it for me, please??)
No longer would people have to join the same network I am on to see what I am doing or saying... all they have to do is subscribe to my feed and I decide which permissions they are allowed.
Now how long before all those other social media sites stop making their pages searchable??
Thanks for the interesting GoogleMe article.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure Facebook could resist the lucrative urge to cashin on user's privacy by putting a single button that would protect users' privacy.
But even if they do, I still think many users will move on to the next big thing, which is: Diaspora? OneSocialWeb? GoogleMe? I can't wait to see.