Social at Google

1 point·jay_kyburz··4 comments

I'd like to have another crack at doing Social for Google. It's really sad to see Google+ languish and I'd love to try something in a very different direction.

Does anybody know if there are any reseach programs or labs or something I could apply to at Google for some money to prepare prototypes, ideas, tests?

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Google's initial instinct was to disrupt Facebook with an open source play called Opensocial.

Then someone at Google decided it would be better to compete with Facebook, and now we have G+, and Google has gained a major competitor.

I wonder what would have happened if Google had kept iterating on an open stack. What are the leading open social stacks these days?

I think social is all about presentation and user interface. I think the G+ stuff is a little weak.

Why not build it yourself? If it's because you don't have money, just get a job somewhere and work on it on the side, why build something for someone else if you think it's actually different?

Absolutely, I might take a month off to mock it up, but actually what I want to do is leverage all the existing google technologies. I could make it look like it would work, but it would need some co-operation for it to actually work.

I think part of the success of facebook is that it has so many tools and utilities built into it. It's not just a place where you share links about stuff you found on the internet and comment.

I'm looking at Google+ right now, and I cannot work out how to message one of my friends. Thats got to be the most fundamental features of a social network.

I had to dig to even find my friends list.

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