"Google to launch Facebook competitor very soon" tweeted Kevin Rose, the tech entrepreneur who founded the content-sharing site Digg. The message that the online world that we all have come to love may drastically change sent a shiver up most social media enthusiast's spines.
Search engine giant, Google, is going to take on social networking powerhouse Facebook with a service reportedly called "Google Me," but hasn't disclosed yet how it will be different. This of course leaves all of us in the blogosphere wondering. Will it integrate Google's existing social networking services like, Orkut or Buzz? Will it build onto Google Profiles?
Just recently my friend and I tried out Google's newest innovation: A Gmail feature that allows you to place a phone call through your computer. The service is free in the US and Canada for at least the rest of this year and costs as little as two cents a minute to dial countries such as Germany and Japan.
However, the most radical idea of the year was Google's jump into social gaming. (Currently, Facebook is the most important platform for this kind of game.) Google has already taken steps onto 'Facebook's turf.' In August, Google announced that they were buying Slide for $228 million, a start-up that makes apps for social networking. Also, Google recently invested in Zynga, the company behind the popular Facebook game, FarmVille.
So, why is Google doing this? Google wants your time. Networking and playing games takes more of your time than searching, and time is money.
According to Nielsen Co. report, Americans spend 22.7 percent of their online time on social networks and blogs, compared with 3.5 percent on search-engine sites. Further, social networking sites have boomed more than any other category that Nielsen tracks for share of US Internet time; they were up 43 percent in June of this year compared to June 2009. In contrast, search engines only edged ahead one percent.
Facebook is definitely enjoying its glory days, but will they last forever? I'm not sure. I do believe that if any other company is to take on Facebook, it should be Google. It will be interesting to see how they differentiate their social networking site. I predict that this element will be the key factor to the site's success or failure.
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