After the first Twitter and blog post of Robert Scoble about Google buying Jaiku the twitter space is full of Jaiku. Its everywhere. Lots of discussion on what this means for Twitter. Robert states in a second post that the deal isn’t about Jaiku versus Twitter, but more about Google versus Facebook.
While I don’t have the excellent sources Robert has, I think he is right about this. Google understands social networks much better than Facebook does. Lets see how the jigsaw puzzle pieces might fit together to describe the Google strategy with respect to Facebook.
- First of all Orkut is (or will be) more open than Facebook is. For example, Orkut will allow application developers to let their services run on their own servers instead of on Orkut servers. Facebook doesn’t allow that. It is much more a walled garden than Orkut is. Why?Because Facebook needs the Facebook network to be valuable, while Google needs to be the connector across the entire Internet. Orkut is just another asset in that strategy.
- Secondly, Google doens’t have to build a social networks as its primary strategy. Unlike Facebook Orkut is simply another means to an end. Google is the connectivity on the web, and Orkut only is one aspect of that strategy. Think Gmail, think Google earth, thin iGoogle. All major Internet platforms than can easily be integrated into one compelling service for the user.
- Google is ready to launch its Google Phone. As said in several posts the strategy here is not to attack the iPhone, it is to attack Microsoft as a mobile platform.
- Google is building up strength in Asia, the continent where (payed) mobile services are adopted quicker than anywhere else in the world!
- Jaiku provides Orkut users with mobile presence information, which will add value to the connectedness in the social network. Let’s not forget that the mobile phone is the most dominant device worldwide (think communities dominate brand by Toni Ahonen)
- Jailu does rss feed aggregation well, providing Google yet another advantage. It controls the world of Rss feeds with Google reader, Feedburner, and now on the mobile platform Jaiku
- I saw a post earlier on Engadget suggesting that Google is also working on a Google PC, which supports again their strategy of becoming the main platform on the Internet and Mobile.
While Facebook is building walls around their service, trying to increase the value of their network (instead of value for its users), Google is becoming the major operating system om the Internet (Search, Social Networks, mail, RSS) and Mobile (Google Phone, Jaiku). Given this strategy I would put my cards on Google, not Facebook. No way they will be able to match that. The big question now becomes whether or not Google will be able to integrate all these services and still remain open as a platform thus providing more value to its users.
@vanelsas 
Do you believe like Robert Scoble that social graph will be the future of search ? i.e. using your social network to search for accurate and relevant content in blogs, sites, pics, video etc … in a way that can’t be subverted by SEOs
Hi AC, that is not an easy question to answer. Yes, I do believe there is value there, simply becasue the best advise you can get is that from a friend right? So, if I want to have advise on something I want to be able to try and find it within my social graph. But there are many other wasy of finding things. Exploration is a good example and a quick hit and run via a search engine another. But, no one has been able to leverage the social graph in such a way that it really works for its user yet. So let’s see what happens there, it will be interesting to see developments in that area.
The problem in searching via social services is that most don’t allow the user to import feeds of their content. Jaiku was a pioneer here, was this what attracted google (social network with user content via feed imports)?
Facebook is just crazy here. There and 100 different applications that will import flickr pics. This is great if you want to be a ‘web OS’ but is a big problem if you want to be a ‘web app’. When you are 100,000 applications you are just a big mess !
Why do we need a web OS ? The web standards should be the OS. RSS, Atom, xhtml, microformats, AJAX, javascript, s3, Apache, php, python, rails this IS the OS. Facebook will tell you that the killer feature of a facebook app is being able to access the social graph. But where is the killer app ? Vampires, Warbook ? The only thing most of these apps do with your friends network is send invites to install the app, i.e. they just spam.
You need a “Web OS” because it needs to run somewhere – it’s not just a bunch of code sitting on your endpoint. Note O’Reilly’s recent posts on the “death” of Open Source and the advent of Open Services. The Web OS is definitely Google because it provides a hosted environment with open-ended heterogeneity for all application types. faceBook is not an OS – it is a Web application server with extensions to third-party widgets/services – indeed the app suite has become a total mess because the expectation is that there is a single desktop from which to view it all. It is impossible to have a single viewpoint and support infinite heterogeneity.
The next brewing OS battle is for the Personal OS. Taking ideas learned from faceBook about Social Graph and extending it both ways – pulling inwards to very tight circles of friends and my own sense of who I am, and pushing outwards to the public projecting my persona. Read this blogsite owner (van Elsas’ posting) on Design of an Open Social Interaction Network link on the right side.
In the context of the Personal OS most user interactions will shift from an overt request-reply mode, to a subtler publish-subscribe mode. Look at how feeds work now. In similar fashion, search too will morph into standing requests, e.g. sticking a wish-list on your profile – and either your friends or your agent finds a match and notifies you.
@Srini. Good remarks on the Web OS and the personal OS. I think you are touching the right issues there. Although I agree with you that Google certainly has all the cards in their hands I think there are also other service providers that could do the trick. Just for diversity purposes it would be good if others would join the game. But to do that we need open platforms and open networks. But moving away from destination based thinking (that is where everyone thinks the money is) into user centric thinking won’t be easy.