Bits: Who Needs Another Social Network?

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By Miguel Helft

When it comes to becoming a force in social networks, Google and Yahoo have tried and largely failed. To be sure, Google has Orkut, which is popular in Brazil and the Philippines, but not the United States. For its part, Yahoo has largely pulled the plug on Yahoo 360. But it is clear that MySpace and Facebook (and Bebo in the United Kingdom) remain firmly on top of the social network heap.

So now Google and Yahoo are taking another tack — turning themselves into social sites without building a social network.

“We are not trying to be another social network,” said Yahoo president Susan Decker on Tuesday, during the company’s earnings conference call. “Rather, by linking users’ favorite destinations and content, with their friends’ families and communities, we can deliver better relevance on a scale that no one else has achieved.” Two days later, the company’s new chief technology officer, Ari Balogh, speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, elaborated a bit on the idea. “We don’t think of social as a destination,” Mr. Balogh said. “We think of social as a dimension.”

What does that mean? It means that Yahoo will attempt to bring the kinds of features that are common on Facebook and MySpace to its own sites. Users may be able to share photos, videos, news reading habits or calendars with their friends and receive alerts about what friends are up to. Who is a friend might depend on context. For instance, a user’s activities on Yahoo Sports may only be shared with that user’s fantasy sports playmates.

Google has long hinted that it would take a similar approach. Earlier this week, it suggested that users of iGoogle, a personalized home page service, might be able to share activities with friends. And the company has allowed users of Reader, its blog viewing service, to share items with friends.

One challenge both companies face, however, is how to turn the voluminous amounts of data about relationships that they have in their e-mail, calendar and other services, into “social graph,” a set of relationships establishing who is friends with who. They will have to tread carefully. Google’s efforts to determine who Reader users wanted to share items with was greeted with some alarm. At a lunch with reporters, Mr. Balogh promised that Yahoo wouldn’t force relationships on anyone without their consent.

The Social Web of the Web 2.0 era is on its way out, online applications are being more mature and evolving into a more usable platforms rather then ‘communities’. Facebook is a prime example of using it as a ground zero for budding applications, so it makes sense for Yahoo and Google to do the same. Google has broken through the usability barrier quite well by having its users incorporate every application it offers into their daily lives. From Gmail to Google Reader to Youtube, Google’s grasp on individuals who use the web is widely undervalued.

http://www.boringmarket.com

†Posted by Boring Market

I’m actually pretty excited what companies with deeper roots will try to learn from social upstarts like MySpace and Facebook. It’s not uncommonly written about how these freshman sites, overnight rock stars that they are, are plagued with spam, terrible design choices, and of course a tendency against any kind of integration with other sites.

The grassroots geeks at Google and the oldschool nerds at Yahoo are likely to make severe changes in the social network scene which will hopefully emphasize customization.

Cryptic as it is, Susan Decker’s plans don’t sound outlandish, but rather a service a lot of internet users have been dreaming about deep within their subconscious: a comprehensive way to find destinations people like them are already taking advantage of. How many times have you discovered a new site and gone to share it with your friends only for them to say, astonished, “You just found out about Deviant Art?”

Google’s approach sounds similar, only they have the benefit of having many, many users invested in services like Gmail and Gcalendar, so not only can they share sites they enjoy, but also their schedules and how best to contact them. This will thus destroy the events function of Facebook as well as Evite and other similar sites.

†Posted by Brian Nichols

I’m afraid I’ve never seen the appeal of Facebook and MySpace. It seems like a lot of talking and chatting, but not much content. But I spend a lot of time online and I’m involved in lots of web sites, message boards and email lists that are related to my interests and activities. I’m more interested in “social networking” as it relates to the things I like to do and the people who share those interests with me. It seems like this is what Yahoo and Google are going for.

I think this kind of social networking will appeal to a wider group of people than the teens and college students who seem to be the main users of Facebook and MySpace. Maybe people like me.

†Posted by Karen

Knolling will be the future, and replace blogs/blogging, using wikipedia, and online encyclopedias, myspace, facebook etc. Knolling is creating, searching, editing Knols. Knols is Google’s attempt to control information sharing online.

†Posted by hunter

Enterprise software vendors are also providing social networks to their customers. Companies such as BEA Systems with their release of AquaLogic User Interaction (www.bea.com/enterprise) are aimed squarely at enabling enterprise versions of social networks for tracking colleagues’ activities and visualizing the social graph in the workplace. There is also a new Enterprise 2.0 assessment tool that launched to help companies understand and get started with social networks and other Web 2.0 tools, check out http://getsocial.bea.com

†Posted by Ajay Gandhi

Yahoo’s 360 social networking concept worked beautifully as long as their IT people maintained it. It’s still there, but barely working because they’ve yanked all support.

The only “problem” with 360 was that it attracted the “wrong” sort of people: those over 40 years old. Yahoo has the gall to consider 360 a failure just because it didn’t reach younger people who are less careful with their money and therefore more “appealing” to advertisers.

Does Yahoo really believe they can bring back all their disenfranchised and neglected older users, and/or siphon off younger prospects from MySpace, Facebook, or even Multiply? Good luck.

Besides, when Microsoft forces their hostile takeover bid onto Yahoo, they’ll just kill Yahoo’s effort, anyway, offering users their lame Windows Live service.

It’s really a shame that throughout all the Yahoo - Microsoft merger/takeover talk, all the chatter has been how it would benefit the companies, or the shareholders. Totally forgotten in all this mess are the loyal users who keep these services afloat. But who are they, right?

†Posted by Tom

This was the news when the collaboration tools for Google Docs came out, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere. I think many of the features are under publicized, but will eventually gain steam as does Google. Now, if Google can find a way to identify friends I should know in it’s enormous network, I might be interested in knowing them.

†Posted by Faith

re: post #1

“Boring Market”?? More like JARGON MARKET! If you want to induce people to click on your hyperlink, you need to provide some real analysis.

†Posted by Chad Edgecliff

The challenge and the opportunity for both Google and Yahoo is to do something that is relevant with yet another “social networking” capability. As an active user of these sites dating back to mid-90s, the relevance is something that still escapes me.

As most readers know, 80% of the content and activity rests with a much smaller fraction. So, here is the opportunity, de-emphasize your energy on building up traction and turn your complete, that is 100% attention to developing countries and international markets to build a new social networking capability. As an experiment, I started a social networking site dedicated to global development, targeting third world issues and the community was over 55% non-US. Free advice to Yahoo and Google, stay away completely from the US market, experiment with something relevant, useful, and helps improve lives.

What we learned is that products and services in developing countries need marketing awareness rather than another Insurance ad or Verizon ad once the “hook” has been established, then Yahoo experts and Google billionaires can bring it “back home”. This is important because, much like the Twitter service, the same privileged few will critique, bad-mouth and talk about which feature is cooler. The fact is, with the financial strength of these companies, and the respect they both garner, positions them well to develop a social networking capability that has some teeth rather compete with Facebook and MySpace.

There are products that Oprah would love to have on her show, but most people simply do not know about them–from exotic cheeses, to $750 dollar scarves made from Yaks to fine writing paper made from elephant dung. This is what should be “advertised” and thus create demand and thus jobs and the resources to scale, and ultimately “pay” or share in the revenue. So, strategically, stay away from developing another social networking site in the US. For more rants on how to save the world, visit my blog at www.mindset30.com

†Posted by Lafayette Howell

The current Web, which I guess is supposedly morphing from Web 2.0 into the personalization and customization of Web 3.0, seems like just so much aggressive data mining to me. Every big site, portal and lucky startup is taking the same, or similar data and attempting to spin it into golden yarn. In the past five years, the buzzwords have been “social-networking”.

Apparently, the “new” social-networking sites will be about your special, select friends, not merely anybody who sees your My Space page and asks to be your friend. And these new sites will focus on your “movie-taste” friends, or your “shared stocks-and-bonds” friends, or your “fantasy sports-league” friends. All in the name of serving specialized advertisements to you. Why not?

I don’t thnk Facebook is turning a profit yet. This is not from lack of ballsy, sometimes dumb moves on the part of Mark Zukerberg and his team of twenty-somethings. Did he really think the Beacon advertising idea as it was originally implemented (with no clear, or easy opt-out) was a good idea? Wow, I guess that’s what you get with no graybeards around, and the lawyers out of the building.

At some point a company like Yahoo reaches its “natural size”. Granted nobody knows in advance what that size is, but when the large year-over-year growth spurts give out, the sh*t hits the fan. Then you have to figure out who to let go and which offices to close. The original creative spark is gone, and the original creative minds are exhausted. A team is brought on board to shake up the sauce. Yahoo has been through a number of teams since its start in the mid 90s.

It will happen to the new King Kong, Google, just as sure as the next sunrise. Oh, it may be 5 years from now, but it will happen.

Just look at what an old bricks-and-mortar company like Ford is going through now. Keeping any brand-name in the act of continuous self-reinvention is impossible. Hence there are cycles to corporations and cycles in over business. I never thought I would see the year when Ford shed 47,000 employees, but it happened just last year.

†Posted by Rob L; N Myrtle Beach SC

” Google and Yahoo have tried and largely failed. To be sure, Google has Orkut, which is popular in Brazil and the Philippines, but not the United States.”

Something that has not worked in US does not mean that it has “failed”. World is not = to US only. There are 300 other countries too!

†Posted by Astonished

its for sure that neither yahoo or google would be ever able to give competition to facebook or myspace. because both facebook and myspace have attained the required masses that makes them immune to any competiton no matter from where it comes. google’s orkut is quiet well used in the developing economies, i dont know the reason for that. mostly the customisation factors of facebook and myspace is what makes them so popular. but both are becomming kind of messy and orkut with a cleaner interface with more of engaging applications can prove a challenge to them.

http://www.bpojobsathome.com

†Posted by rakesh maya

google’s orkut is a big rage in india, almost every young indian is a user of orkut. familiarity levels with google is very high and the content localization is excellent.

†Posted by Pawan Kumar

social network, great, now it is real in the net world, at least with your classmates.

†Posted by shinta

The challenge and the opportunity for both Google and Yahoo is to do something that is relevant with yet another “social networking” capability. As an active user of these sites dating back to mid-90s, the relevance is something that still escapes me. As most readers know, 80% of the content and activity rests with a much smaller fraction.

So, here is the opportunity, de-emphasize your energy on building up traction and turn your complete, that is 100% attention to developing countries and international markets to build a new social networking capability. As an experiment, I started a social networking site dedicated to global development, targeting third world issues and the community was over 55% non-US. Free advice to Yahoo and Google, stay away completely from the US market, experiment with something relevant, useful, and helps improve lives.

What we learned is that products and services in developing countries need marketing awareness rather than another Insurance ad or Verizon ad once the “hook” has been established, then Yahoo experts and Google billionaires can bring it “back home”. This is important because, much like the Twitter service, the same privileged few will critique, bad-mouth and talk about which feature is cooler. The fact is, with the financial strength of these companies, and the respect they both garner, positions them well to develop a social networking capability that has some teeth rather compete with Facebook and MySpace.

There are products that Oprah would love to have on her show, but most people simply do not know about them–from exotic cheeses, to $750 dollar scarves made from Yaks to fine writing paper made from elephant dung. This is what should be “advertised” and thus create demand and thus jobs and the resources to scale, and ultimately “pay” or share in the revenue.

So, strategically, stay away from developing another “me too” social networking site in the US. For more rants on how to save the world, visit my blog at www.mindset30.com

†Posted by Lafayette Howell

I think social networking is a personal fad where everyone begins, peaks and then winds down. Its a lot os silly stuff.

Facebook has 15,000 applications, each one is a complete waste of time (lets keep it real) and each one makes you spam your friends.

Linkedin…I have an account and 157 connections. Has it gotten me a new account? No. Has it helped me sell my product better? No. I have however gotten spammed from others trying to sell me something.

Myspace…Pugh- LEEEZE!

I like surfing on the web on all of these but lets face it, they are silly and are not trylu utilitarian. Google….yes, thats useful.

†Posted by David Unger

I don’t need or want any kind of “second life” but I must admit that I have far more online friends than “real” ones. No physical community could possibly be so diverse.

†Posted by Chris

Who needs another social network? Good topic, and it’s great to hear that one of the Hallmark email systems (gmail) used in the Cornell/Stanford/MIT engineering industry group www.geocities.com/engineer_brunch all use One Email, Gmail. Thus, our social network will have focus, within an email system that offers so much already. Thank you, Google

†Posted by h shimbo

Who needed the first one?? People, get a life. The more we “socialize” online the less in person. Go to church. Join a service organization. Take a class (in person, not online). Just do it.

†Posted by George

What is the point of search engines becomming involved in these other ventures. Reality # 1: users don’t care. They only want to use this tool to search, not become a social network. I wish all of these companies would just go basic and leave all the unwanted services behind, but because they are attached to the ever wasteful corporate models now, we will have yet to see another stupid comglomerate.

†Posted by David Carlin

Orkut is very popular in most of the Asian countries not just Philippines.

†Posted by johans

Google/Yahoo doing a social networking is like ordering steak at a seafood restaurant. I use and participate in a few social networks for business, professional education, and personal use. I use both Yahoo and Google for their tools and search. I think both companies would benefit by being “social-compatible” and extend their tools into the social realm.

But don’t try to do the whole social thing. No matter how well the steak is prepared, its going to smell fishy.

Sandy: http://www.allaboutmephotography.com

†Posted by Sandy Allen

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