Google Me, The Next Social Network?

By Elgin

It's not enough for Google that it tries to find a way to enter social network market. Actually, Google has already had Orkut and Google Buzz but Orkut only made its fame in India and Brazil, and the ill-received Google Buzz dealt with privacy problem. The rumor now said that Google was working on a project called, 'Google Me'.




The rumor started from a rogue tweet from Kevin Rose, The Digg co-founder, that wrote "Ok, umm, huge rumor: Google to launch facebook competitor very soon 'Google Me,' very credible source."Adam D'Angelo, ex-Facebook executive and Quora co-founder, backed up Rose's rumor on his own site. "This is not a rumor," wrote D'Angelo, pointing to information culled from "reliable sources."He again wrote, "This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this"

Well, this project could be big, people are waiting for Google's next move and the market is so vast that there are still rooms for other social networks to penetrate, according to Matt Brittin, Google's UK Chief Executive. Not only Facebook gain 500 million members, commercial activities target social networks as well. A new study published last week by Regus, the office supply company, found that 40pc of businesses around the world have successfully used social networks to win new customers. However, that figure falls to 33pc when applied to the UK market. The survey also found that 27pc of businesses worldwide have set aside a proportion of their marketing budget to invest in members of their staff to build a strong brand presence on social networks.

However, Google has its own advantage to enter the social network market. Google already possesses a number of social media features, such as Google Profile, Social Search, and Buzz. What it lacks is a central hub designed with the intention of definitively tying together these sites into a true social network, in the Facebook and MySpace sense. Doing so would require a bit of reverse engineering—essentially, building a Facebook from the top, down.

Still, one of the things to consider for Google is privacy matters. Besides Buzz's privacy problem, privacy became an issue among Facebook users as well. before Facebook announced the changes on privacy settings in last May, Sophos, a computer security organisation, questioned 1,588 Facebook users. 60pc of the users considered deleting their accounts on the social networking site while 16pc of them had already stopped using Facebook because they felt they had inadequate control over their data and a quarter said that they would not be quitting the social networking site.

However, Google has the infrastructure. As Emma Barnett said, "If Google can really learn from both its own mistakes post the Buzz debacle and Facebook's blunders, Google Me could become a very powerful alternative to the biggest social network in the world."