Tag: social

  • A different social circle

    The ‘inefficiencies of scale’ in a social business scenario is something I keep writing about – wrote about it recently in the context of Google vs Facebook too. So I found this article, which was about the demise of Facebook in 5 years, very interesting. Though predictions are dime a dozen and are many a time used as traffic boosters, this one comes from a person who predicted the decline of MySpace four years back. What interested me even more was that he said the single social networking platform concept will give way to smaller networks.

    Meanwhile, after all the hype Google Me generated, and expectations of launch in Fall 2010, our knowledge remains at a ‘social layer’ level and its internal project name – Emerald Sea. So, when i saw Google’s foray into fashion – boutiques.com, and its working, I wondered for a moment whether this could be another rendition of Google Me. After all, a common interest is a great context for social interaction too. And over a period of time, search would be honed better and be social too, with a curation (like shown in Boutiques’ case) that goes beyond algorithm and crowd.  This interest could be a place (say hello to Google Hotpot), or an interest that aggregates people, like books. (yes, Google’s store is coming soon) That would be changing the social landscape quite a a bit. Add to it shopping and say, a GroupOn integration by context/location and Google will have fun, not to mention local advertising revenues. It would also have a better grip on aspects like privacy, influence, and would be smaller networks rather than an all encompassing one. Its a bit of wild and far fetched thought specially when we know that Google Me is now slated for Spring 2011, but interesting, you think?

    until next time, off for a fortnight 🙂

  • A different kind of social

    Despite a healthy skepticism for all things Google attempts with social, Wave and Buzz not having helped very much, I was quite excited after I saw the presentation below by Google’s Paul Adams. (the link which I had shared last week) It meant that Google Me was worth keeping a watch on. No, not the movie, the service.

    The Real Life Social Network v2

    [Read Mahendra’s excellent key takeaways+thoughts post if you need a quick snapshot without having to read 216 pages.]

    I was quite impressed with the scope of the presentation – from looking at people’s motivations behind their ‘social’ actions to the insights that have been gleaned. I must admit that i was a bit surprised that Google, or at least its employees took social this seriously. Good to know that Facebook and Zuckerberg’s stated aim of 1 billion users in the near future is finally pushing Google to do something other than killing of services (Jaiku, Dodgeball…) or making a mockery of itself in front of its competitors with half baked products. And that they’re doing research too. My first thought, after I finished reading the document was

    Clipboard02

    Its ironic that Google faces a ‘What Would Google Do’ on itself. The good news is that there is enough scope for developing a network for context based social relationships and transactions. Like I said in my last post, the tools available still don’t allow me the freedom to aggregate and disaggregate connections and content at will in different contexts. It is possible to build a social network around many contexts – enterprise/professional use, location, family, interests and so on. I even saw an interesting app built for ‘proximity based networking’ – it syncs your existing networks – Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace with location and thereby does a twist on location based networking, with seemingly good privacy controls.

    The bad news is that Mark Zuckerberg won’t take too kindly to encroachments in his space. As if ‘friends’ weren’t universal enough (at least inside the FB universe – including Connect), ‘Like’ is even more universal, and Facebook’s recent play is aimed at pipping Google’s (relative) ability to deliver the most relevant content to the user. It doesn’t help that social doesn’t seem to be what Google’s comfortable with.

    But assuming Google Me is a social platform of some sort, what I’m wondering is that how many users would use Facebook lesser for a service which allows context to be brought into the picture. There’s something really simple about the ‘sharing’ on Facebook. For a service that used to be labeled ‘complex’ in the Orkut era, it has come far. Users have adapted. Also, how difficult is it for Facebook, which already has a massive userbase to introduce features that allow a user to create sub identities to splice and dice friends (already has lists) and content and choose what to use outside the network? It already has filters to control the kind of information I want to see on my newsfeed, these can be improved too.

    The other thing is how/where Google would build this – a separate service/ something around or integrated with iGoogle/Buzz (brrr)/Chrome (browser or OS)/ Search itself ? A lot of the design would be based on this. And how can it balance the simplicity of Facebook sharing with the more complex needs of context and privacy?

    A larger perspective is that we’re nowhere close to the end game as far as our (probably seamless in the future) network of digital and real activities go. Its having a larger impact than what we sometimes credit it for. In fact, we are only discovering how the web is changing our behaviour and even perhaps motivations. A few of us have yet to decide whether we want to sync our multiple online identities. And that means that though Facebook is probably the most accepted solution now, its by no means the perfect one, even for our current understanding. Facebook, Google and the ones we haven’t even heard about are all Work In Progress, but boy, what interesting work it is! No monopoly, lots of chance and multiple community chests 🙂

    until next time, google yourself 🙂

  • Faces in the crowd

    The thought started with a tweet of mine sometime back- “if some of my twitter friends lived geographically closer, my real social life would rock too :|” At least one blogger and now microblogger seemed to think so too. Why Twitter friends? Because on Facebook, and earlier Orkut, its mostly reunions or keeping in touch with those you already know. They are what i call contextual friends – made by us at some point in time at school, college or at some workplace. Their relevancy decreases with time and space. Yes, that is generalisation, and I do have a way of coldly analysing it. Humour me 🙂

    Blogging and Twitter work in a different way. You guys read this blog because you like the content, or you have to laugh twice a week at how a guy exhibits his lack of writing skills so blatantly to the world. Anyway, the majority of you do not know me from reality. Now increase and decrease the number of characters (people and letters respectively 😉 ) and you get Twitter. So in the case of blogs and twitter, you first get to know people virtually, and if all works well, you perhaps might meet up really. Now, in my case, except for a few meetings (that i can count on one hand) and one blog meet (which reaffirmed that I shouldn’t be attending them) I have kept my anti social record quite clean. 😀

    But the Twitter statement came because I’ve come across at least a couple of people on Twitter, with whom i have vibed splendidly. While it started off in my characteristic guarded manner, over a period of time, I’ve been able to be truly me, and not do anything for acceptability, with them.

    Let me elaborate a bit on this. In reality, we befriend people with whom we have a few things in common. There are some traits of theirs which we don’t particularly like, but since the net takeout is positive, we continue the relationship. Some of us, knowing that others dont like a particular trait, play it down in front of them, to be more acceptable. This is something I’ve grown to hate, and which along with my occasional penchant for “Hey, spade”/switching off, would partially explain the decrease in my real social activities.

    In reality its very difficult to tap people on their back, ask them ‘hey, are you interested in bollywood, F1, spirituality, music….and subscribe to certain views’ and then have sensible discussions, where we can even agree to disagree. I think virtuality makes it easier, but the snag then, is geography. The other snag is that it will push me deeper into the anti social shell, because now I know kindred souls exist, albeit far away.

    until next time, i still agree to a bit of socialism though 🙂