Comments on: Google Readying Facebook Killer?

By: John Koetsier

John Koetsier — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:23:08 +0000

Ditto on the “social graph” gag comment.

By: Phil

Phil — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 18:55:19 +0000

…and search. Google are king of search too. I don’t know if that will help though.

However, I think the important thing in gaining a user base is already half there. You guys are talking about using Gmail, YouTube and a load of other Google services, you already have a Google account and so do a lot of people. Google will have all of that to lever people into using their network and if the platform is as open as you say it will be, there will be developers creating even more reasons for users to get involved.

Finally, don’t forget that Google already has a social network with a whole load of users; Orkut! They are hardly going to compete with themselves, they will surely just improve, update, even relaunch it with the added excitement of the open platform.

By: engtech

engtech — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:40:56 +0000

If google leverages YouTube properly then there’s a chance.

I’ve seen all of the casual people switch from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook, so I’m starting to believe that there’s only a 1-2 year window for these sites before people move on.

The adding friends gets people into the site, but can it hold them long term?

By: Tony Hung

Tony Hung — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 06:46:23 +0000

I totally agree — which is why I think about how it boils down to the casual social networker … the same ones who are using it to set up events, share photos and so on.

The question isn’t if *we* will switch to Google — or any other — social network. Will *they*?

By: engtech

engtech — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 06:39:12 +0000

It’ll all come down to where your friends are. This is just the same instant messenger war that happened years ago where you couldn’t talk to your friends if you were on different IM networks. Eventually people started writing cross-network clients.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s eventually a Facebook app that hooks into the Google social graph.

What will kill my Facebook usage is if my friends stop using it for setting up events and sharing photos. That’s the only thing I use it for now that the initial love affair has worn off.

By: Tony Hung

Tony Hung — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:58:36 +0000

Webomatica — I think the real proof will be seeing how “everyday” social networkers approach the Google social network. Question is will *they* want to flip?

No question, Google has access to incredible amounts of information — but you could argue that Yahoo does too, through its Yahoo mail, Yahoo messenger, now, Mash, and all other sorts of stuff.

We’ll see what happens if it happens I think. :)

By: Webomatica

Webomatica — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:21:05 +0000

Despite my social network fatigue I think Google can do something cool here. Without really intending to, I’m a pretty addicted user of Gmail, Google reader, and now GTalk. I’m looking forward to this because I *still* haven’t fleshed out my Facebook profile.