Google’s social strategy

It is widely believed that Facebook presents a significant competitive threat to Google. Google itself seems to believe this – Larry Page recently said that all employees would have their bonuses tied to the success of Google’s social strategy.

Why does Facebook present a threat to Google? A few reasons:

- The utility of Google’s core product – web search – depends on the web remaining fragmented and crawlable. Facebook has become the primary place web users spend their time and create content, and is mostly closed to Google’s crawlers.

- Facebook controls a large percentage of ad impressions and will likely launch an off-Facebook.com display ad network to compete directly with Google’s display ad business (built from its $3.1B acquisition DoubleClick). It is generally thought that display ads will become a larger portion of online advertising spend (versus direct response text link ads) as more brand advertising moves online.

- There are many other “wildcard” risks – e.g. Facebook competing with Google (and Apple, Paypal etc) in payments, Facebook gaining power on mobile (threatening Android), and the possibility of a greater share of internet intent harvesting happening on Facebook through not-yet-released features like a search and/or shopping engine.

When going after Facebook, Google has at least three key strategic choices to make:

Strategic choice #1: Should Google try to make social networking commoditized or new profit center? (For more about what I mean by this, please see this post on Google’s overall strategy and these posts on “commoditizing the complement” here, here and here).

The advantage of creating a new social networking profit center is obvious: if you win, you make lots of money. The advantage of commoditizing social networking is that although you forgo the potential direct profits, you open up a wider range of pricing and product options. For example:

- When you try to commoditize a product, you can offer a product for free that other companies charge for. This is what Google did with Android vs iOS and Google Apps vs Microsoft Office. Of course, making social networking free to users won’t work since Facebook doesn’t directly charge users (I say “directly” because they make money off advertising & payment commissions, among other ways). However reducing the cost to zero for 3rd-party developers like Zynga who have to pay Facebook large commissions would entice them toward a Google platform (note that, not coincidentally, Google invested $100M in Zynga).

- Interoperate / embrace open standards – Normals don’t care whether a product uses open standards, but by interoperating with other social networks, messaging systems, check-in services, etc., Google could encourage 3rd-party developers to build on their platform. If Google chose, say, RSS for their messaging system, it would already work with tens of thousands of existing tools and websites and would be readily embraced by hackers in the open source community. The web itself (http/html) and email (smtp) are famous examples where the choice to open them unleashed huge waves of innovation and (eventually) killed off closed competitors like AOL.

Strategic choice #2: How should Google tie its new social products into its existing products?

Besides a mountain of cash ($30B net, generating $10B more per year), Google has many existing assets on top of which to build. Google Buzz tried to build off of the “implicit social network” of Gmail contacts, which hasn’t seemed to work so far and raised privacy concerns.

Google’s recent mini-launch of its “+1″ button seems to be good use of the strategy known as “anchoring”. Google is apparently trying to create a federated network where websites embed +1 buttons the way they embed Facebook’s Like button except the +1 button would be a signal into Google’s organic ranking algorithm (as an aside, this is where Gmail becomes useful as having millions of logged in users makes spamming +1 buttons much harder). Websites care a lot about their Google organic search rankings (which is why, for example, helping websites improve their rankings is multibillion-dollar industry). A button that improved search rankings would likely get prominent placement by many websites. Making +1 appealing to users is another story. The user value is much clearer for the Facebook Like and Twitter Tweet buttons – you send the link to your friends/followers. Providing value to users in addition to websites is a good reason for Google to acquire Twitter (something I think is inevitable if Google is serious about social – see below).

Finally, Android and YouTube are intriguing potential anchors for a social strategy. I’ll leave it to smarter people to figure out exactly how, but products with such large footprints always present interesting tie-in opportunities.

Strategic Choice #3: Should Google buy or build?

Historically, it is very rare to see tech companies adjust their “DNA” from within. Google’s best new lines of business over the past few years came through the acquisitions of YouTube and Android. Moreover, these acquisition were unusual in that they were left as semi-independent business units. Facebook’s hold on social is incredibly strong – besides the super-strong network effects of its social graph, Facebook has made itself core infrastructure (e.g. Facebook Connect) throughout the web. If Google really wants to catch up, they’ll need to go back to the strategy they succeeded with in the past of acquiring relevant companies and letting them run as separate business units.

* Disclosure: I’m an investor in a bunch of startups, so you could reasonably argue I’m highly biased here.

http://profiles.google.com/wcshields William Shields

Hi Chris,

One correction. According to http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG&fstype=ii it’s $10B/year not per quarter.

Cheers

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

ah yes, thanks

Anonymous

Google has access to all of twitter’s data, quora’s data, why should they buy twitter. I guess right now the valuations of a lot of social companies are inflated, maybe a downturn is a better time for Google to buy any social flavored companies, I guess twitter will be a lot more amenable to being bought out then.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

i think goog’s deal for twitter data was temporary but not sure. they would
buy it for the data and also to be able to tie it into to things like +1.
twitter won’t let them have unfettered access w/o a hefty price tag
associated with it (i’m guessing).

http://twitter.com/udeme udeme

It was temporary, cobbled together after talks with Twitter fell apart. But you make a good point, a +1/Twitter mashup would (finally) be a proper challenge to Facebook

http://profiles.google.com/kdsandeep Sandeep Deshpande

is this ‘deal’ something beyond the firehose http://blog.twitter.com/2010/03/enabling-rush-of-innovation.html, I don’t think twitter will shut off firehose for google. Why exactly ? maybe if Apple or Facebook buys twitter, maybe then might shut it off.

http://twitter.com/brianbarela Brian Barela

really enjoyed the post.

when people talk about google going “social” i rarely hear Gmail mentioned–my priority inbox is a much more accurate social graph than my facebook friends, or even the ones that show up in my top news.

i do love what they are doing w hotpot and integrating into google places, and especially the way it looks in the mobile environment.

i think they are trying to methodically add a meta layer of social over their existing data–places is a natural place to start, but i imagine them rolling out apps/features that continue to encourage people to interact w their data in more personal ways. i can’t see them acquiring social, unless there was a large amount of data and user info that they did not have–foursquare and yelp (already tried to acquire) come to mind.
http://halfwaynerdy.com Ryan Hoover

There’s no doubt Facebook’s moving into Google’s advertising space. Their incredible scale and distribution of social widgets (like button, comments, etc.) could power the most effective advertising platform yet. Facebook’s been (rightfully) slow to pull the trigger and advertise outside of their domain as they test and optimize their ad network. The most recent example is the reported “real-time ad targeting” system (http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-tests-real-time-ad-targeting-2011-03) designed to make ads more contextual and timely – just like Google Adwords.
Anonymous

It be interesting if Google got the multiple social graphs insight after their failure with Buzz. Also, I get what your saying with Zynga, I could see a dedicated space more similar to YouTube than anything else Google has now where that type of thing would be hosted. Maybe App Engine will give them a Facebook Apps (early iteration). What I don’t see is Google stepping into the core business of Facebook, it feels wrong, a “social” feed or timeline for your friends, vs. your contacts or other temporary networks.
Android is a different matter, Google account (sync service) integration is incomplete, too much room for the OEMs and carriers to jump in. Google though, more than “social,” needs to leverage their media and advertising brand, maybe actually push for advertising clients in other programs than AdWords, deals as discovered intents (seeded like yippit, but based on organic results first, discover what user’s really want and push providers to bundle it, leverage Maps vs. Yelp). Another place where the Android Notification and intent system is more important (arguably) than the Facebook Feed, but you can’t spam it. Google would also do good to bring that first to Chrome/ChromeOS and then to every browser (if every page had a Google bar with notification drawer, Android style, reward webmasters who choose to include it with PPC on sponsered events BUT DON’T SPAM) (also, it might inclide Google account login/logout but it should be branded by the site, not Google)

Anonymous

I think you make an interesting point about games. Google engineer said he sees the day when Google apps will host a MMO online. That a bold claim but I do not see Google engineer making such claims unless they have or are considering such features at some point in the future.

Anonymous

I dont think you have successfully made the case that Facebook presents a significant competitive threat to Google. Facebook may be competition but they are hardly #1, 2 or 3 as potential threats to Goog’s income.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

I’m not at all sure FB is Google’s biggest threat. I was mostly citing
other people like Larry Page. In fact I have argued previously other
companies like Amazon are more direct threats to existing business:
http://cdixon.org/2010/05/22/while-google-fights-on-the-edges-amazon-is-attacking-their-core/
http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

I’m not at all sure FB is Google’s biggest threat. I was mostly citing
other people like Larry Page. In fact I have argued previously other
companies like Amazon are more direct threats to existing business:
http://cdixon.org/2010/05/22/while-google-fights-on-the-edges-amazon-is-attacking-their-core/

Anonymous

thanks for the link re: amazon

http://www.showmeapp.com San Kim

I agree with that using Gmail accounts as an “identity layer” for +1 could be really valuable for search.

Perhaps it signals a bigger strategy to use Gmail + Google Profiles to create an identity layer to compete with Facebook’s? (the recent overhaul of Profiles seems to hint at it)

If creating a unique identity layer is the key to Social, Facebook obviously has a massive head start – could Google ever really compete with that?

Anonymous

How many people got Youtube profiles,and Group profiles, and Blogger profiles.

I do not actually know the answer but I would not be surprise to fine that if you add all of those together you would fine the number close to Facebook numbers.
There also a possibility of leaveraging the Android platform and getting them plug into Google network.

An we should not also forget Google music service as well.

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Anonymous

You realize that Google is already using RSS/Atom + Activity Streams + PubSubHubbub for social messaging?

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

Through Buzz or Reader? Yeah, I’m just assuming they have a bunch of big
new features / products coming out (based on press gossip) so am speculating
as to what those new products might be based on.
http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

Through Buzz or Reader? Yeah, I’m just assuming they have a bunch of big
new features / products coming out (based on press gossip) so am speculating
as to what those new products might be based on.

Anonymous

You realize that Google is already using RSS/Atom + Activity Streams + PubSubHubbub for social messaging?
http://profiles.google.com/kdsandeep Sandeep Deshpande

somehow I don’t think search and shopping are going to work on facebook. Social gaming worked on facebook, because it was new and innovative. Whereas almost anything else search, shopping, movies etc are available outside facebook and facebook brings nothing innovative to it either technology wise or process wise or business model wise. I don’t think netflix is going to suffer from facebook movies for instance or amazon is going to suffer from social commerce(wondeful misnomer and which indicates the bubble we live in, everything gets tagged with social to make it sound cool) within facebook. Facebook is attempting the impossible task of creating an internet with internet. They are bound to fail at some time. Apple is also trying to create an internet within internet via their appstore and will probably succeed more than facebook. People go to facebook to waste time, hang out with friends.

As far as ads are concerned, it is a fallacy to think when brand dollars move from offline, TV to online, same amount of dollars will flow in, it will be reduced because internet is a different sort of medium to offline, TV. All the analytics, data mining of ads(for eg google allows you to skip ads on youtube, so google knows which ads work and which don’t very easily, something not that easily calculable with TV, Offline ads and have to rely on the unscientific, expensive surveys carried out by comscore, nielsen etc) will ensure all the inefficiencies will be thrown out and when inefficiencies get thrown out, the quantum of ad spend will also be reduced. Brand advertising is more susceptible to a downturn/recession as well.

google helps both consumers and advertisers to save money and get the work done in the most affordable manner. Its a killer combo really. Google has utility, productivity knocked down cold. Facebook has a long way to go to match that. They might or might not, but it is not a given for sure. And people use google services out of choice, despite alternatives being available.

Biggest clue is to how facebook competitors are doing, ie netflix, youtube, twitter, foursquare and groupon and all of them seem to be growing fast and none of facebook’s ‘copycat’ features are slowing these services/companies

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

I am generally skeptical of FB tacking on seemingly random features like
movie downloads. Then again, they just have so much user traffic they might
be able to pull it off. I dunno.

http://twitter.com/nitya Nitya N

Two observations in the context of Google vs. Facebook (and what, IMO, boils down to a battle between algorithmic and social search strategies for monetization)

1. FB has succeeded in instrumenting the web into a push model. Websites (and owners) proactively provision their sites with buttons and snippets of metadata to support a push of data into the FB ecosystem in an effort to be part of the FB social ecosystem. Google still relies on a pull (i.e., crawl) model – witness the number of sites that contain Facebook/Twitter ‘post’ buttons. Google Buzz is relatively rare. If the “+1″ helps redress this model, it may even the odds – but from a search/index perspective, push models have arguably faster and cleaner signals to process in real time.

2. FB has failed (IMO) in supporting faceted identities for the user, and in supporting a simpler way for regular users to understand and manage the reach/access to their data. While the system may have some idea of ‘strength of ties’ based on some historical data (e.g., which groups I joined, similarity in age/ethnicity/college background), it doesn’t do much to help the end-user visualize and enforce boundaries according to these ties. By contrast, I like to think that my Gmail account probably has a much better idea of my facets based on established groups/tags and communication attributes and if Google can create tools/APIs to support management of facets across networks, that could be a key to social success.

From a users’ perspective, an interesting question for me is: “If you could only keep one account and had to delete the other – which one would you keep? Facebook or Gmail? And why..” – I think that answer would be very revealing..
http://www.w2lessons.com Michael Woloszynowicz

I think strategy #2 has the best shot of success from a placement standpoint. As you’ve noted, whether or not users click through is another story. If you look at Buzz links on sites like TechCrunch they get about 1/100th the clicks that a Twitter button does, so they’ll have to provide value to both sides of the network. Paul Graham said it best that the next Facebook won’t be like Facebook. Google has to find a completely new value proposition rather than trying to beat Facebook head-on. A +1 button is unlikely to unseat Facebook or Twitter from a social standpoint so Google will either have to come up with a revolutionary idea or buy it.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

Yeah, sounds like we agree.
http://twitter.com/andyidsinga andyidsinga

yup – google has to find a new direction to participate in social.

Facinating that facebook made social a commodity before they had complimetary products that would benefit from increased demand.

http://twitter.com/starttowonder S Jain

Ha, Chris you and Robert Scoble decided to write similar article at the same time. Just wrote a comment there few mins back. Also, what Rob calls my friends suggesting me how to waste my time you call it hunch which I think is going to be big and should be on radar for Google. I am going to just write the bullet points from that comment here what steps Google should do

- At least one landing page for social (Buzz inside of Gmail creates fear and hate than love)
- Something different and more than Facebook (Like Users data for User to play with) (along with Facebook stuff if Google is desperate)
- Target to kill twitter as its very much like Myspace before Facebook and replace with Google’s twitter. Maybe part of Google’s Social Landing Page
- Strategies like +1 should be launched along with other social strategies else if there is a viral effect with something like this, it dies down by the time the next product is launched
- Tells me how to waste my time better or “Hunch” as you call it.
- Ease of using “My Internet Identities”
- Add my non social identity/tools to social landing page

“Users data generated for User” – Not my friends data but my own data generated and presented to me in such a way that i like to see it. This is something I think will be sticking point for any “social network”.
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http://twitter.com/pankaj013 pankaj013

Problem is while I search using Google, when I find something and want to share I have to use Facebook/Twitter. Google loses out on the information and that information is Gold because it tells out of the 1,235,653,234,234,234 results it found, the one that was most relevant is now stored in FB/Twitter databases and Google doesnt even know about it. Over-Simplied view, but crux of the problem.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

good way to put it.
http://profiles.google.com/kdsandeep Sandeep Deshpande

google has access to all of twitters data.

http://twitter.com/pankaj013 pankaj013

Well, as I said it was oversimplification. What I was trying to point was that while Google does a good job of helping me search it doesn’t do a good job of managing my state, my state still needs to be passed on to FB/Twitter. Google being stateless makes me do the same effort again and again even if I search the same thing again and again. Question is if I and three of my friends are searching details on the same thing, does Google help leverage the effort each one of us has put in individually. Google needs to add social to search and not focus on both as two different problems.

http://profiles.google.com/kdsandeep Sandeep Deshpande

it will be very hard for google to pull it off, people will not want to share what they are searching for starters. Searching is more or less non-social. If Google starts to share that, people’s trust in Google will erode rapidly. Google needs to buy twitter and incorporate it into +1 and various other things they are trying out with social.

http://twitter.com/pankaj013 pankaj013

Well, people are already sharing the information they search for, if they find it relevant for others. The problem is not whether to share or not but how to share. If Google decides to share whatever I search, then of course its a problem (Buzz was a classical case, sharing without letting me know what all it shared and to whom). People want to control what to share and with whom and what Google needs to do it enable people to share without having to go out of Google walls. Right now people have to go to FB/Twitter. Google needs to build social around information(search) just like facebook/twitter built it around friends and linkedin/twitter around colleagues. The paradigm is bit difficult because while the latter are built around people, the former needs to be built around information but its much more powerful. Amazon book recommendations/listmania/reviews are mini social networks around information and not people. That just needs to be scaled to all search.

http://ibusinessprofessional.com video marketing

Really? I do not use twitter more.

http://profiles.google.com/kdsandeep Sandeep Deshpande

google needs to build a notification bar for chrome natively ala notification bar for android and tie-in all of google various ‘social’/'collabaration’ properties and they should make it closed source , so that competitors don’t take it and modify it. Google needs to be a little more ruthless towards its competitors, they are too goody goody
http://twitter.com/fawazn fawaznasser

Interesting analysis. I also find it intriguing to think about how the ultimate thrust of the respective companies engineering cultures are on opposite directions. Google being a primarily engineering driven company geared towards solving problems as quickly as possible (witness Google Instant) while facebook is a company that aspires to be the center of people’s time wasting, naval gazing efforts to maintain social relationships.
http://500startups.com/ Dave McClure

Google should buy Twitter now (or two years ago, really) and get it over with already. I seriously don’t see any future where this doesn’t happen, and the soap opera has gone on far too long. Google shareholders will eventually have overpaid dramatically more than they needed to if they had bought them after the Twitter-Facebook discussions went nowhere. anyway….

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

agree +10

http://twitter.com/kevinmarks Kevin Marks

if Google had bought Twitter instead of Jaiku, would you now be saying ‘Google should buy Jaiku’ ?

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

No idea, but it seems to me that when they bought social companies in the
past they made the mistake of folding the teams in and not letting them
operate as separate business units.

http://businessmindhacks.com AlexSchleber

That seemed to be the point over on BusinessInsider in the Google reorg Winners/Losers post, where Page has presumably signaled that acquired teams will be left alone a la Android and YouTube. If true, that could make Twitter’s Costolo/Dorsey more amenable to selling than before:

http://alexschleber.amplify.com/2011/04/09/twitter-a-secret-winner-in-google-reorg/

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

yeah seems to be the case….

http://thesis911.com/ thesis

exellent question)))))
and the post is good in general. but i dont believe much in this. google hides a lot about how it works and what strategy it is going to use. they change it all the time. they change so many things and so quickly that it is hard to follow them. and i dont believe they would share with the audience all the details all at least some general facts. maybe some part of them to warm up out interests but not more…

http://twitter.com/starttowonder S Jain

The point is Google wants to buy Path and Groupon and Twitter….. Are they willing to sell…. Well maybe …everybody and every company has a price and Google has the pockets.
http://essayserve.com/ essay writing

agree with you..
http://twitter.com/jonintweet Joni S.

I disagree strongly. Social is a problem for Google but Twitter would have little value in solving it. Besides, it is bad economics to buy a company for billions when there is no revenue for that company, pure and simple (possible business models don’t count because monetization is far from axiom).

I’m also skeptic with this +1 thing, already it seems lame as a term (compare saying “Joni liked x” and “Joni +1′d x”). Also, are there enough users willing to participate in terms of network effects? Facebook is a place where people hang around for social purposes, Google’s offering does not match — by the way, this is also a blessing for Google since search may involve stronger purchasing intents than social browsing (which in return may win in brand building).

In the end, we may see that Google will hold search and FB social. And this might be the best result; nobody wants either one to control the entire Web experience.
http://twitter.com/jonintweet Joni S.

(and sorry for the late reply, this post sat on my Reader queue for a long time

Anonymous

Seems like the interoperability strategy is not going to be used, as things like this

http://www.igvita.com/2011/04/07/life-beyond-http-11-googles-spdy/

are happening. Is now google tusning its back on open standards? why?
http://twitter.com/orenraboy orenraboy

I would reframe “social” to “identity” if I were Google.

I think that it is unrealistic of them, at this point in time, to “beat Facebook at social” in the classic sense of the word– FB is just too far ahead in terms of reach and mechanics. It is like Yahoo saying they will “beat Google” on search circa 2003-4…

But, while Connect is helping FB make tons of progress towards becoming the de-facto standard in managing people’s “web ID” , it stands to reason that Google could effectively compete in that.

So to refine your analysis a bit, I’d add the following observations:

- GMail provides a good starting point in terms of user-base, but they do a poor job in federating its use (e.g. look at this blog, I can post a comment with FB, Twitter or Disqus but not my gmail…). They need to fix that.

- Buy Twitter. Unify identity with Gmail (login to twitter / gmail with same credentials), but don’t mess with it beyond that. Disqus might be a good target too…

- The key in my mind is using their brand to get banks, major retailers, etc. to push their identity solution.

It’s going to be hard for them because ultimately people will use what’s most convenient for them… But if Google unifies it’s assets and pushes hard&fast, they can still get there… maybe.

‘identity’ has been looming around the web for decades but looks as if it will start happening. It has massive monetization potential both in direct and indirect (ad-targeting etc.) revenues and you can paint a path where it becomes the convergence path for “search” & “social” (money-wise).

If I were Google I’d focus less on where people socialize online and pay more attention to what they use to identify themselves…

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

That’s a really good point. People too often conflate social and identity.
In many ways Facebook’s identity (FB Connect) is just a happy side effect
of creating a place where tons of people have signed up with real identities
for a mostly different purpose (sharing photos with friends vs sharing
comments with the public). As you say, cutting bait on the fun stuff
(socializing) and going just after the serious stuff (identity) might be a
more realistic at this point and also more fitting to Google’s traditional
strengths. Plus identity is what will be the important part in the upcoming
payment battle.

As an aside, a funny side effect of Gmail being so important to me is I
think I’m less likely to want to give other services access to my Google
services.

http://profiles.google.com/bryanjwilson Bryan Wilson

I agree with the last point, but also for Facebook. I’m almost certainly in the minority, but I often hesitate linking my Facebook account to any outside service. While I find a lot of value in having a “web presence” and don’t share some of the more ludicrous privacy concerns some people have, I am uneasy in creating this massive, increasingly unmanageable chain of links through my online identity. There are things I don’t mind making public and others that I want to keep more private. There’s an opportunity there for one of these companies (or maybe someone else if it’s not too late?) to wrest some of that control over to the end user. I may be wrong, but I think there’s value in that.

http://hrishimittal.com/ Hrishi Mittal

Chris, who do you consider the biggest threat to Hunch? Google, facebook, or twitter?
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http://www.youtube.com/dfmediainc Triny D

excellent analysis. I do believe the answer is a better implementation of iGoogle. renamed “Google Me” me.google.com/profilename with a newsfeed like twitter’s.

Facebook’s curated multimedia newsfeed will lose favor when people eventually realize that Facebook decides which of your friends can see your status)

http://sparkplug9.com johnkoetsier

Google Me >> Google We
http://twitter.com/jonintweet Joni S.

Why not “My Google”?

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http://twitter.com/Philippe3000 Philippe

Here’s a couple of thoughts:

- Google can’t build “social” around gmail. Because not everyone uses gmail, and the chances of getting 500m people to switch out of their existing email is unlikely.

- What do I get for hitting the +1 button? Not much by the looks of it, so why use it? But if I received a list of personalised +1 sites alongside my search results I would be tempted to use it (almost like a lightweight delicious). The list would be presented similar to how sponsored results are. Aggregated +1 info would of course be fed back into the main google algorithm.

- Google should use their main strength to leverage into social and acquire partners cheaply. Their main strength? – unlike MS, Apple or facebok, they can afford to be open.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

agree – good points -thanks

http://andrewroyer.com Royer

Great article, I think, only got to strategic point #1. MY attention span is FUBARd.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

lol. too much so interwebbing.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Sid-Labs/100000804868370 Sid Labs

I think Google is more concerned what Facebook do or not rather than believing in what they have? Google can still make their search engine more humanly than machine algorithm by adding up a layer of social interactivity upon it thus provide better ranking of search results for the user. It’s kind of SOCIAL SEARCH. Infact I have made a utility which is doing what I mentioned on my blog post:

http://sidlabs.com/social-search/

I would be interested if you or anyone else could look into it. Just because I am not in US, I am not finding way to promote it or get it to know to right people.
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http://pulse.yahoo.com/_B72US2NWRUK6AHGUK4NLFTKRCU Ed

interesting. not sure why Google missed with “check-in” apps such as foursquare. they cudda incorporated that into Google maps.
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http://profiles.google.com/neilmody Neil Mody

If Google does try compete head-on with FB in a pure social network destination site, one way to do it (and importantly one that Google has a lot of experience in) is allowing the content providers themselves (in this case, the individuals of the social network), to make ad revenues off the content they create (in this case, ads on their pages and ads on-page app usage). If you look at the AdSense network and even youtube, they give content creators an instant viable monetization stream. Just make good content, get eye-balls, and Google will help you monetize it. So in a social network, if I am popular enough to get people to my page, then Google can monetize that with their existing ad network and give me a cut. So this could align well with Strategic Choice #1, all they have to do is adjust the rev share accordingly.
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http://www.giarty.it Francesco Giartosio

one minute please
Anonymous

When you’re talking about embracing standard, do you think that Google could launch a Diaspora-like? It would make sense (and would really put Facebook at risk).
Anonymous

When you’re talking about embracing standard, do you think that Google could launch a Diaspora-like? It would make sense (and would really put Facebook at risk).
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Chris Dixon