Why I'm Giving Social Networking a Second Chance (Part 2)

Yesterday I talked about how I'm trying to give social networking a second chance by checking out Facebook and what it has to offer. So far, nothing has scared me off from it so that's a good sign. I can say that we currently have 20 friends (and I only know 1). Thanks Josh, I think your the only one officially I know is on there! Oh wait, Justine just msg me on my wall!  There, see I told you she'll try anything once.

So enough about Facebook already, because today is all about November 5 and Google. Michael Arrington, tech messiah, gave out some really juicy tidbits about Google announcing a new set of APIs. These APIs will allow developers to leverage a Social Graph. Let me run this down in Layman's terms for ya.

Currently there doesn't exist a single social graph (or even a few which talk together) that's comprehensive. Instead we face hundreds of disperse social graphs, most of dubious quality and many of them walled up like a prison. Facebook first took stabs with changing this to a degree when they released their Facebook platform back in May. It allowed developers to use Facebook's own social graph and build off of it. Not only do developers get deep access to Facebook’s twenty million users, Facebook also becomes a rich platform for third party applications. Of which I'm enjoying to much of btw.

Google, then stepped in....and said, mine.

Google is set to drop on November 5, a series of APIs for developers to leverage data from their social graph for Orkut and expand from there to include Gmail, Google Talk and other Google services over time.

Which brings me to a point of discussion and questions that I'll be looking forward for Google to answer.

1. Ultimately is Google social graph being offered as a single id, like online "social security card"? Is that ID, OpenID or is it your Gmail account? If it is a Gmail account, then does this kill OpenID? If it is a Gmail account, does Google insto-win the Email market if everyone has to have a Gmail account?


2.  Obviously people won't all accept this as a platfrom they want to utilize, but who will be the early adopters of integration? How will they affect the outcome?


3.  Are the data that each developers (Twitter, Pownce, Facebook) is adding to an id being aggregated into the graph and now Google's? Or is Google focused more on your connections to your friends?

4.   What is Google Ultimate goal? Are they just trying to make a viable alternative to Facebook? Own all personal information of all users? Win via default Email?


One big reason why I think this will work - is because Google already has its hooks in me. Personally, I’ve gotten to regular use of GMail, GTalk, and Google Reader without even intending to - or realizing it. I could imagine Google adding “social network” features onto Google Reader. They could integrate Google Reader and GMail. As you read a post or forum you could already know what your friends thought about it, or if it was even worth your time.  Think about peer-sharing and how that will change, think of the integration features that could be integrated with Google Docs!!#$!@#$

And on that, I must leave now, because I now have to clean off my keyboard. 

P.S.  Oh and that Image up top, from Techcrunch, kinda looks like what I just did.

Tagged with: API, Facebook, Gmail, Google, OpenID