Friday, September 17, 2010

Google's Social Efforts

Image representing Google Buzz as depicted in ...Image via CrunchBase

New York Times: Google’s Chief On Social, Mobile and Conflict: Expect to see social tools from Google this fall, he said, but do not expect a brand new social network. Instead, Google will add social components to its core products..... another rivalry — the one between Google and Apple over mobile phones — as different than the one with Facebook. .... “I have been surprised at how important Android is for our business” ...... particularly interested in buying social networking and advertising start-ups, has picked up the pace of acquisitions .... “Most of the acquisitions that we are doing are focused primarily on technical talent”

Fred Wilson: Social Layers And Social Intention: FriendFeed was largely a social aggregator whereas Twitter is a service with specific social intent.

Mike Arrington: TechCrunch: Details Of The Google Social Layer Emerge: “Google Me will produce an activity stream generated by all Google products. Google Buzz has been rewritten to be the host of it all.


Search and social are apples and oranges, to use the very tired metaphor. Facebook can do social search, as it has every intention to do, and Google can do search social, but Google does not have the option to become Facebook. It does not need to.

Google can not ignore social any more than Facebook and Twitter could have ignored location. But Facebook can not, should not become Twitter, Facebook is no FourSquare. Google is no Facebook. It has no need to be.

Google Also Answered My Blog Search Prayer
My Gmail Prayers Heard: Multiple Inboxes
Real Time Search: Where Google Can "Get" Social
A Ridiculously Good Blog Search Engine
Google Does Not Need Social Envy

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Thursday, September 16, 2010

User Friendly Twitter? Get Out Of Town

Twitter logo initialImage via WikipediaThis New York Times article makes me feel like I felt when Google did the thing I wanted done on Blog Search and Twitter search results. I have been talking about simplifying Twitter, about taking it more to the masses. And now looks like Twitter is doing it, finally.
New York Times: Twitter Revamps Its Web Site: He has said he was surprised that so many people use the service — 160 million — given how difficult its Web site is to navigate. ..... If people want to learn more about the author of a post, for instance, they must go to a new page. It has been almost impossible to follow a conversation between two Twitter users. And while a quarter of the posts contain links, if people post a link to a photo, readers have not been able to see the picture without going to a new site. ...... people see two panes .... The timeline stays in the left pane. In the right pane, they can see more information about posts — like biographies of authors, photos and videos to which posts link — and conversations that spring from a particular post. .... Twitter now shows a continuous stream of posts so people do not need to click “more” to view additional posts.
Towards Threaded Conversations On Twitter
Twitter: The Obvious Missing Features
Twitter Has To Scale The Signals
Twitter Acquires Tweetie: The Drama
Twitter Need Get Work Done
Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem
A Ridiculously Good Blog Search Engine
Google Does Not Need Social Envy
Google's Prediction API
Google Also Answered My Blog Search Prayer
My Gmail Prayers Heard: Multiple Inboxes
Real Time Search: Where Google Can "Get" Social

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Zuck In New Yorker

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, dur...Image via WikipediaThis article has been getting a lot of play. It has been widely shared on Facebook. Did I say Facebook?
New Yorker: The Face Of Facebook: The site is a directory of the world’s people ..... Zuckerberg has three sisters (Randi, Donna, and Arielle), all of whom he’s friends with. He’s friends with his parents, Karen and Edward Zuckerberg ..... his favorite musicians Green Day, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, and Shakira. ..... Zuckerberg’s Facebook friends have access to his e-mail address and his cell-phone number. ..... “Is there a site that streams the World Cup final online? (I don’t own a TV.)” ..... At 2:45 A.M., E.S.T., on August 29th, he was at the Ace Hotel, in New York’s garment district...... our shifting notions of privacy, revelation, and sheer self-display...... “I’m trying to make the world a more open place.” ..... one out of every fourteen people in the world has a Facebook account ..... “our new Caesar.” ..... Zuckerberg remains a wary and private person. He doesn’t like to speak to the press, and he does so rarely. He also doesn’t seem to enjoy the public appearances that are increasingly requested of him ....... He does not plan to see the film. ...... s pale and of medium build, with short, curly brown hair and blue eyes ...... five feet eight ..... distant and disorienting, a strange mixture of shy and cocky...... he sometimes talks like an Instant Message—brusque, flat as a dial tone—and he can come off as flip and condescending, as if he always knew something that you didn’t ...... Attached to the basement is the dental office of his father, Edward Zuckerberg, known to his patients as “painless Dr. Z.” (“We cater to cowards,” his Web site reads.) ....... Some kids played computer games. Mark created them...... Soon thereafter, Mark started taking a graduate computer course every Thursday night at nearby Mercy College. When his father dropped him off at the first class, the instructor looked at Edward and said, pointing to Mark, “You can’t bring him to the classroom with you.” Edward told the instructor that his son was the student........ News of the software’s existence spread on technology blogs. Soon AOL and Microsoft made it known that they wanted to buy Synapse and recruit the teen-ager who’d invented it. He turned them down....... e arrived in Cambridge with a reputation as a programming prodigy. He sometimes wore a T-shirt with a little ape on it and the words “Code Monkey.” He joined the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, and, at a Friday-night party there, Zuckerberg, then a sophomore, met his current girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, a Chinese-American from the Boston suburbs........ had a knack for creating simple, addictive software ....... Their site, he says, emphasized dating, while his emphasized networking. ..... Sorkin .. professes extreme dislike of the blogosphere and social media ...... “It’s a group of, in one way or another, socially dysfunctional people who created the world’s great social-networking site.” ...... As it happens, Sorkin’s “The West Wing” is one of Zuckerberg’s favorite television shows. ...... he responded coolly: “I know the real story.” ...... A few days after we spoke, Zuckerberg changed his Facebook profile, removing “The West Wing” from his list of favorite TV shows. ..... after asking a friend to suggest a car that would be “safe, comfortable, not ostentatious.” He drives a lot to relax and unwind, his friends say, and usually ends up at Chan’s apartment. ...... They spend most weekends together; they walk in the park, go rowing (he insists that they go in separate boats and race), play bocce or the board game the Settlers of Catan. Sundays are reserved for Asian cuisine. They usually take a two-week trip abroad in December. This year, they’re planning to visit China. ...... Zuckerberg has found all his homes on Craigslist. His first place was a sparse one-bedroom apartment that a friend described as something like a “crack den.” The next apartment was a two-bedroom, followed by his current place, a two-story, four-bedroom house that he told me is “too big.” He rents. (“He’s the poorest rich person I’ve ever seen in my life” ...... a few years ago, he took an online test and realized that he was red-green color-blind. Blue is Facebook’s dominant color, because, as he said, “blue is the richest color for me—I can see all of blue.” Standing in his kitchen, leaning over the sink, he offered me a glass of water...... Looking back, Chan said she thought that the time of the Yahoo! proposal was the most stressful of Zuckerberg’s life. “I remember we had a huge conversation over the Yahoo! deal,” she said. “We try to stick pretty close to what our goals are and what we believe and what we enjoy doing in life—just simple things,” she said. ........ In early September, Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page, “Priscilla Chan is moving in this weekend. Now we have 2x everything, so if you need any household appliances, dishes, glasses, etc please come by and take them before we give them away.” ...... s a giant sea of desks—no cubicles, no partitions, just open space with small conference room ...... Zuckerberg’s desk is near the middle of the office, just a few steps away from his glass-walled conference room and within arm’s length of his most senior employees. Before arriving each morning, he works out with a personal trainer or studies Mandarin ...... what an “intense listener” Zuckerberg is. ...... In the early years, Facebook tore through a series of senior executives. ..... most of Zuckerberg’s close friends, who worked for Facebook at the start, have left. ..... It’s hard to have a friend for a boss ..... s ultimate goal is to create, and dominate, a different kind of Internet ...... Privacy, he told me, is the “third-rail issue” online.
I don't own a TV either. Great minds think alike.

Your Facebook page is the homepage you always wanted since you heard of the internet. That is why Facebook grew so big so fast.

My favorite color is also blue.

I have not seen the movie. I am in no hurry to see it. I might not even see it. The movie promises to be an elaborate caricature. I am sure it is dramatic, but it is fiction. As for Facebook and Zuck, for me the truth is more fascinating than fiction. Give me a good book or two that tells the story.


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