This must be Google's Facebook clone. It sure looks like it. | Hacker News Reader

This must be Google's Facebook clone. It sure looks like it.

profiles.google.com

209 pointsaj70076 comments

I don't think google will ever win at social, every site that started small changed and adapted to what the users wanted, google can't do that, they launch a new site and bam millions of users instantly; yet all these users want different things, so instead of shaping the experience around what they need to get users (what Facebook did) they're catering to what they think will retain users. They have to find out what users want without the access to "organic" information, market research is proven time and time again to be worthless.

The problem of getting users is often one that defines a site, when you don't have that problem it becomes a battle to stop users leaving to better more "mature" pastures. I think the next big social site (if there ever is one) will be a no-name small-gone-big site, but even then with how everyone (users) is about social now (they want to be instantly in on the next big thing) I doubt that can happen. I think that maybe Facebook is the end of social sites, which feels strange and ridiculous to say, but maybe.

Google will never "get" social, there is nothing to get.

Edit: in fact I think a great example of this is Google Wave. It was a fantastic product for a variety of tasks, project management was one, yet Google pitched it as the "next big thing" to users so they all joined with ridiculous expectations of what it was and wasn't and now look what happened... Tumblr is another great example in the other direction, what the site is now is very community orientated, yet from the interviews I've seen with the founder (David something) it didn't seem as if this was intention from the get go, yet users used the site like that and so they adapted and enabled users to use it like that. Now look, they're huge. Does anyone know of any products launched by big companies (Google, Microsoft etc.) that did go big? I can't think of any off hand, would be interesting to look at how they grew and developed.

Hm, that's interesting.

In terms of product development, perhaps Google would be better off implementing a Y-Combinator based model where 2 to 5 people work on products by themselves -- away from Google's offices. They'd do this anywhere they'd want -- living together in a house/apartment, working from coffee shops, etc. They'd have access to Google's resources if/when they'd need them (kind of like how YC now has significant resources to help out its companies -- e.g. TechCrunch for initial distribution), but would not be required to use them.

The ultimate metric for a web property is getting repeat users at scale, so that's the #1 goal.

But as you say, Google doesn't really suffer from this problem at least initially (they can always get a substantial amount of immediate users for any new product).

The problem is, are they products people want? Are they products that'll generate repeat users at scale?

I wonder if the people building products at Google are building things for themselves, or for what they think people want.

The best products are made with one user in mind, and that user is the maker.

IIRC I think google ran the wave project kind of like this, and look how that turned out.

That is a pretty silly thing to say. My buddies business failed, and they used computers, so therefore nobody should use any computers to start a business anymore.

The problem with Wave wasn't that it missed its target as much as it was that the folks who "got" what Wave was about were largely the same folks who were already using Lotus Notes/Domino to its full advantage. I've worked in shops where people lived in Notes, and in shops where people lived in email in Notes, and there's a vast difference between using an integrated collaboration environment and messaging links and attachments back and forth.

It's funny, in a way, that people have a hard time putting the pieces together. They seem to "get" email, instant messaging, publicly editable documents, wikis, blogs, "related links" sidebars and so on...

Often times, I think the best products have an objective feel to them. So in the case of Wave, I'd say that its creator didn't have a clear understanding of what they wanted, or they were "commissioned" by Google to make it, in which case Google was the maker and should have been very closely involved in its development.

For Microsoft, X-box comes to mind as something they started after they were already huge, which was, eventually, a success. It took them a while to get it right though. Perhaps it's easier for big companies to do well with new hardware because it's harder for new, little companies to do hardware at all.

(I've never used an X-box; by "get it right" I mean "get popular.")

But the X-box wasn't "big" when it was released. Microsoft was sort of the under-dog in the console market.

Just as google is the under-dog in the social market.

Google just needs a halo.

Which probably just means acquiring talent and company once someone else starts to hit it big.

The important point there is that in a lot of cases the product doesn't actually matter. What matters is the community and social expectations that emerge around the product, and it's pretty difficult to nurture those with a huge launch day dump of unrelated people.

I thought Orkut (by google) did amazingly well in some parts of the world?

http://www.labnol.org/wp/images/2008/02/social-networks-popu...

It did for a while, but has been mostly subsumed by Facebook in India, and increasingly in Brazil.

Edit: see, for example: http://cybergyaan.blogspot.com/2010/05/orkut-vs-facebook.htm...

Google did not create Orkut, it was acquired.

No, Google created Orkut.

In 2003, Google offered to purchase the social network Friendster, but the offer was declined by that company. Google then internally commissioned Orkut Büyükkökten to work on a competing independent project. The result was Orkut. The product launched on January 24, 2004.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut#History_of_orkut

(If it isn't clear from that quote, Orkut Büyükkökten was a Google employee)

They named it after an individual? How odd. It's like Facebook being called Zuckbook.

>> Google will never "get" social, there is nothing to get.

yeah on Google's every attempt to be social they didn't success well, but UX researcher (Paul Adams) at Google have some good thoughts on online social hubs. seems very interesting. would we ever see such Real Life Social Network from Google or any others?

Link: http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ...

Why did Google give up so quickly with Wave? If Wave were an independent company, would they have given up so quickly? How can Google win if they give up so quickly?

As someone who has implemented operational transformation, I believe Google dropped it because it consumes a lot of network resources. If it became popular, Google would have to dedicate a fair chunk of infrastructure to it. Could they do it? Yes. But I believe they ran a little cost/benefit analysis on it at scale and probably decided they didn't want to continue with the wave model.

I am aware that some operational transformation is used in docs, however the usage scenario is different: collaboration is not the default use case and the number of collaborators would be smaller than in a wave, where the default use case is many waves with many participants.

How much infrastructure did it take for Google to run wave? They could put adwords on it like every other product they've done.

They may have used some of their technology in Google Docs. However, they could have refined the Google wave model more. Instead, they hyped it up, and then quickly dumped it.

"Does anyone know of any products launched by big companies (Google, Microsoft etc.) that did go big?"

IE, GMail, iPhone...

Or, restricting to websites: GMail, G cal, G reader

while you might be right, i wouldnt be so fast to write off ggl. Google after Yahoo, Gmail after hotmail, android after ios, fb itself after myspace should i continue? Google (and some other big COs) have quite successful track of following/copying/buying/redefining/spin-offs.

I know many ffb users are already feeling frustrated with latest FB initiatives as they simply need place to stay in touch with friends and some of them would be happy to switch to something like "Facebook classic".

Besides that FB is doing great in exploring "what is SOCIAL"(how it works/how to make money out of it etc), but someone yet has to tell me what would REALLY stop other followers to copy all the best results once they approach their maximum(both in terms of product and growth challenges for company). I heard a lot of "Google just dont get it", "why GGL cant build X/Y", "social must be in your DNA" noise but someone has to explain why they absolutely cant do something IF they really need/want it. And I am not taking Wave as a proof, as it just shows me that GGL still has balls for serious decisions(and i count both starting and stopping something BIG as a major achievement)

Something tells me that this is just the beginning...

GMail strikes me as a good example. Google maps. Can't think of any from Microsoft, but that's probably just because I haven't used a Microsoft product in 3 years. Actually Bing seems to be doing decently well.

I find it telling that for a big company, their major successes (as a big company) are typically software that do not need an installed base to add value. Mail and Maps are both applications that stand on their own and it is irrelevant what application your friends are using.

However, the cases where installed base is relevant is a serious failure. Wave and Buzz come to mind.

My understanding is that Google Maps was largely an acquisition: Where 2 Technologies, from Sydney, acquired in Oct. 2004. Its founders were, incidentally, the Rasmussen brothers, more recently known for Wave.

Maps in its present form is basically the fusion of an acquired startup (Where 2) and an internal project (Google Local, done by Bret Taylor and Jim Norris, later of FriendFeed and FaceBook fame).

As I understand it, the original Where 2 product was a desktop app, much like what became Google Earth, and not all that groundbreaking because satellite-imagery desktop mapping apps have been around since the mid-1990s. Google Local, meanwhile, was a search product, much like the current Local Universal search experience.

When Where2 was acquired, there was a flurry of interest in how to get that beautiful satellite imagery and user experience onto the Web, where the rest of Google's products were, and that's how Google Maps was born.

Google could easily do this, all they need to do is remove their branding and not announce it. I think your edit hits it dead on which is expectation management.

No, it's the updated Google Profiles as discussed previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2282094 (http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2011/03/decide-what-worl...)

And as I said in the previous discussion, the reason profile pages tend to use the same layout is because it's an established design pattern now. People already know what to expect when they see a page with that layout.

Thank you for the links. I saw this post and thought, "Isn't this old news?" Maybe not, but I could have sworn I saw something in this vein weeks ago.

To be fair it happened 4 days ago.

This is the internet, damnit.

If the headline "Decide what the world sees when it searches for you." means that when someone search a name+surname profiles.google.com will always be top I see this as quite powerful!

That has be Google's social trump card. If they ever pull the trigger on that, that is a real Facebook competitor (Actually, seems more like LinkedIn competitor now that I think about it). I always like the rumored branding of Google Me for this reason.

Of course, they are getting some heat for the OneBox stuff they do, so there is some danger there.

Only if you want everyone Googling your profile straight up. In an era when people worry about colleagues, employers and stalkers discovering their public profiles and photos too easily, I'm not sure if this will be useful for everyone rather than self-promoters, SEOers, etc.

I think your mention of LinkedIn is closer to the mark.

The reason I don't use Google profiles is that I have no reason to. A public facing, Facebook like site? No thanks.

I wasn't interested in Facebook until a real life friend from another state invited me. That's Facebook's draw for me; interaction with real friends and family.

Google's ubiquitous and omnipresent ways of doing things will win it's way on social.

It's kinda crude, but I think Google's plan is to make Google Profile (aka Facebook clone) ubiquitous and omnipresent blurring the line going to a social networking site and just searching for that person.

Kinda like Microsoft's thing with Windows 98 when everything can be used as Internet Explorer.

I think you're onto something. Google won't "win at social" by setting up something that looks like Facebook and being a "better Facebook." And neither will anybody else, most likely. But they can "win at social" by simply continuing to link their various services together more and more and more, and gradually introducing more "social" features.

When you look at what Google have with GMail, Google Calendar, Reader, Buzz, Docs, and their other properties, they have a great foundation to build useful "social" stuff. But remember, "social" doesn't necessarily mean "just like Facebook" (or Twitter, or whoever.)

And I still think that a few fairly minor (IMO) tweaks to Buzz would make it an awesome product that could gain a lot more traction.

public profiles have existed for a long time. this isn't new.

Although the feature itself is not new, the new design does seem to be highly inspired by Facebook's.

actually, if you go to this video from a year ago, you can see that this year's Facebook redesign was rather reminiscent of the old Google profiles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYf5iSA6t6g&feature=playe...

They all seem to be reminiscent of MySpace, er I mean Hi5, or maybe I mean Friendster. Point being, a "profile" page has a standard design, the same way a e-commerce catalog page has a general layout that nearly every shopping cart employs.

yeah, I went for the snark, but I think your point is much closer to the truth.

Good artists copy great artists steal.

I logged in to check out my own, ancient Google profile (which I just about barely set up—bare minimum of info and hadn't logged in since the day I'd heard of it) to discover that has a picture in it that I'd never given Google permission to use. I'm sure they got it from Adium (I use gchat with Adium), but I found it creepy to have my profile given a picture without my knowledge or permission.

I'm fairly certain that Google does not pull the picture from Adium, rather, Adium pushes the picture to Google.

Now if only I could import my downloaded facebook info into there...

Google is for search. That's what people know.

As long as Google published apps under their Google brand, they will not fly.

The popular servics Google has (Blogger, YouTube, etc) run all under their own brand.

If Google seriously wants to make a social network, it must run under its own brand/domain. And they should give it a little more attention than they did with Orkut.

I don't think the problem it Google not "getting" the "social". Its about not creating a distinguishable brand. Google is search.

Is it not a terrible name "Google Profiles" for facebook killer ?

I think "decide what the world sees when it searches for you" is a very good concept. You can expose yourself without having to worry about privacy. I wouldn't want to make my Facebook profile available to everyone.

I posted this because I was shocked by how facebook-like it is. The buzz tab is there if buzz is enabled it seems. You prob have to turn it off entirely to kill the tab.

I turned buzz off the day it launched. So I was more surprised that it now look exactly like a facebook wall.

Some nice differences. You don't have to choose between male and female. But the relationship field has the same choices. Sadly, there is still no "X is currently shagging | fucking | etc Y" option. That's more like what I want to say. Pick your own damn transitive verb.

It's got the lame and prudish "X is in a relationship with Y" as ever.

The problem is Google isn't hungry. They don't make these things work because they don't have to. AdSense will always put food on the table, so they don't have the sense of urgency to fix this. It's a common problem for companies that already have a cash cow and then try to develop or acquire secondary services, e.g. Yahoo with Delicious. They don't have the sense of urgency, executive focus and the commitment to make them work.

Hunger has little to do with it. Actually, to understand why Google is unable to succeed, you have to understand Facebook's incremental approach to integrating real life social groups. Facebook started out by targeting the college demographic, then established organizations (companies and other organizations) and eventually opening to the public.

[ Another reason for Myspace's failures - after the initial inbound success, they didn't focus at all. On anything. ]

I can't see Google treading down the same road using the same old approach, i.e. building an app, releasing it as a beta to try out with the masses, etc. They would have more success trying social out with the organizations which use their Enterprise apps. Disclaimer: I don't use Google Enterprise offerings, so I have no idea if they already have one there.

my company uses Google Apps. It absolutely astounds me that both Buzz and Wave weren't launched first as Enterprise Apps, only. They both would have been useful as enterprise collaboration and communication tools, and having it be entirely within an organization solves the "who can I talk to" problem -- much like Facebook did by targeting college campuses. As a average schmoe -- I have zero reason to use Buzz, for anything. Get everyone in my company on it, and I'd be using it every day. Everyone would. And it's actually a great tool for that, it would solve problems that aren't addressed well by either email or the various internal wikis.

I'm actually still a little pissed Buzz hasn't shown up...more than a year after Google said "Yes, Buzz is certainly coming to Apps."

It's just a little bit mind boggling to me -- it seems so obvious. From what I understand, Buzz was (is?) used inside of Google for internal communication/discussion. THAT is the use case for it. But they launched for something else, and ignored what would have been a great starting point for the product to gain some momentum and a community of users who would go out and sell it later on.

Buzz is one of the most mismanaged products I've ever seen.

In particular its presence on Android is laughable which is just ... inexplicable. Other than being afraid of a law suit of some kind (which would be bizarre given what else Google puts on Android) I just can't understand why they haven't put Buzz front and center there.

My pet conspiracy theory is that Google has done some kind of deal with Twitter whereby they have agreed not to compete in certain ways in order to get favorable treatment wrt search.

Absolutely agreed. Buzz is used internally in exactly that way. And is very popular. But the lesson taken from that was, "We have a potentially great product here!" and not "We have a great product to use inside of corporations here!"

Your launch strategy would have worked much better.

I think they should have gone for an about.me/flavors.me presentation . If anything, just to pull away from the facebook look.

But then all the comments on HN would be about how Google is copying the *.me sites and squishing poor innocent startups. :(

Besides that, the look they have now is a little more fitting with the spartan Google theme than a big flashy about.me knockoff would be. It works.

No doubt, it works. Just that the resemblance with facebook is so strong, (right down to the grid placements), that it looks 'weak'.

In Brazil, it was translated as "Google Perfis". Bad bad bad. Facebook is a single brand across all countries. Google should keep a single brand as well, even "Google Profiles" would be better than "Google Profiles" translated in every language possible.

My Buzz tab was completely public by default. That's annoying.

"This does not change who can see the posts - private posts stay private."

Facebook already serves as a personal wiki for name searches. Will Google rank Google profiles higher than Facebook results for a given name?

Speaking of which, has anybody tried google.com/health? Or how about the cool WebGL-powered site bodybrowser.googlelabs.com?

i thought orkut was google's facebook clone?

Orkut launched a month before facebook, not that it matters now.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=facebook%2Corkut...

Do I see a "Buzz" tab?

shakeshead

Why should Google not have a Buzz tab?

Edit: Also, you can show or hide the tab. So if you don't use Buzz and you don't want that tab shown on your profile, just hide it. However, this way Google can let their users that still use Buzz display it on their profile.

Buzz symbolizes everything wrong with Google's social strategy. They need to move on.

Linking to dead properties and adding a few fields isn't going to fix social.

What does it mean for a product to "symbolize" something? Is it the product you are objecting to or the branding?

(There are also pockets of really high quality activity on buzz. See Terence Tao's very active feed for instance: https://profiles.google.com/u/0/114134834346472219368/buzz )

It's a product with very little traction and an inferior experience to what's already in the market(twitter, fb).

Unfortunately pockets of traction for a product as old as Buzz means very little. Social for big guys like fb and google is about scale, not niches.

it depends on what you mean by "experience." I think buzz is easily superior to twitter, but I use twitter because the community I engage with is there.

does the existence of picasa's online albums somehow harm google because only some people use them?

Here’s my discussion on the Buzz user experience, from a year ago. http://alanhogan.com/buzz-is-already-dead

(tl;dr: Too distracting, not very skimmable, awkward social aspects including too many non-friends showing up.)

Buzz is actually way more useful to me than facebook and twitter. The functionality is the same, obviously, but the fact that I can switch tabs while in gmail to check posts is pretty useful. Sadly I only know 2 people that use it, and mostly, it's automatic posts from twitter.

I can see how it can be more convenient. But how is it more useful if only 2 people use it?

Right. That should have been "would be".

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