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Is Google Launching a Competitor for Facebook/Twitter?
Can Google Be the Next Facebook?7 comments Monday, February 8, 2010
Google is rumored to be working on a Facebook/Twitter-like feature for Gmail. According to the Wall Street Journal, who cites "people familiar with the matter", the feature, which would "make it easier and faster" to share status updates may launch as soon as this week.
As I've written about a number of times, Google is really one big social network with a bunch of features, and integration is the key to harnessing that social power. A product like this could be just the ticket, because according to these same sources, it would integrate content shared through YouTube and Picasa. Who knows what else could be worked in?
Gmail currently has status updates of a sort. In the chat section, it has a menu of your contacts who also use Google, and shows their current status of they have one set. You can set one easily at any time.
Google has not yet responded to requests for comments, but if we learn more, we will keep you updated.
If Gmail offers its own Facebook/Twitter-style timeline, would you use it? Should Facebook and Twitter be worried? Share your thoughts.
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Hard to tell
@James Not so long ago, on there were mostly geeks on Facebook too. Unlike other social networks, Facebook managed to diversify its user base, and tap into new markets, that were dominated by other social networks.
@Chris Chrome has a link on the Google homepage and on YouTube, I'm still surprised how slow they are in their take off, taking in consideration how badly IE sucks.
Google was messing around with social networks before, there is Orkut.com that is far from being a stellar success in North America or Europe. Google Wave, that is not a social network, more like an online collab tool, had a rough start last year. The decision to give access to it only by invitation, was not to bright and the lack of users led to lack of action. Except a few Waves, most of them are not updated since November last year.
Will they manage to compete with Twitter or Facebook, hard to tell. Twitter is far from being perfect, apart from the flying whale, there are many things lacking, still it's the place to be, just as Facebook too. No wonder all the brands are in a hurry to get on them.
I think the success of a social network is very unpredictable and it can't be guarantied by trowing money at it, or getting the best ad spot in the world for it. Will this rumour prove to be true, I'm curios to see what they will come up with.
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All Google has to do is put a link on google.com.