Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Advice to Google

This morning, while the market was tanking, I read an internet article about a rumor that Google is working hard on a social network that is intended to be a Facebook killer. The word is that Google will essentially reproduce the Facebook model.

I was moved to attach the following comment to the article:

If Google needs to put up an anti-Facebook (and they do), they should not copy Facebook. They should build a serious place for serious people, even businesses. Demote the "friend" notation which, in FB, limits the discourse to silliness, and elevate user-defined roles and relationships that can be multiply assigned within groups. Groups should be expanded to include user-defined "offices" and "organizations". Finally, tie the concept of "actions" to an easy-to-use work-flow engine, and promote it with all the people who work for a living and are candidates for Google apps which will be integrated with the system.

There it is, the once and future next big thing.



3 comments:

Larry Blumen said...

This generalization of a social network would not only leapfrog Facebook, it would expose SalesForce as a stealth social network and Google's true competitor in this area.

Tyler said...

Wow, no way. I mean, I think the silliness on Facebook is in many ways what people want, but I can't wait to see what Google does!

Larry Blumen said...

Tyler: thanks for your comment. I don't think we have to worry about Google taking my advice, but long term I see social networks evolving into business networks. You can still keep the friends connection, but supplement it with things that capture the way businesses and other organizations work.