IMO, Google COULD tackle "social", but not with the same approach that worked with facebook. They ought to forget about facebook's approach and attack from another angle. I have some ideas how it could be done, but it's a bit of a conundrum to say the least.
Sure, but I don't think my general idea would suit google (as of their current behaviour). Allow me to elaborate a bit.
Google has 'social' platform already - Gmail. However, what they have tried to do so far is to force 'social' elements into their current offerings, and they have tried to append external turn-key systems like orkut.
You can't force social behavior onto your users, as they have successfully demonstrated. As I see it, only two successful platforms so far, facebook and myspace (which died) had a different start. They started out from human element, which is people started banding together and dragging along their friends into it - onto a central place. Email is social too, but it isn't one central place, but more peer to peer.
What I think Google should do is to do something they have never done before. Humanize Google. Introduce customer support, active engagement with current user base, expand into traditional media, and not only with google ads, but with interactive shows based on google platform, editorialized part of google news, etc... only then will users start to feel google is something they can empathize with and concentrate around it vs only using their services and go away.
tl;dr; humanize google, bring human element to it. Actual humans into their services.
humanize google -- that will NEVER happen for pure economical reason.
you are not talking here about hiring a customer team of 50 folks answering the phone. you talking about half a million team of humans sticked to the phone 24/7 in order to accomplish that and succeed. I dont think AdSense revenue would cover the payroll and still keep GOOG stock going up.
here is the blueprint as of HOW google can win social:
take me as an example: I am a web programmer, mostly php and mysql. google can determine that from my searches I am sure. but no matter how much I google I am still getting pages of C++ and Oracle results to my php/mysql problems.
To win social they should let webadmins of all sort of websites and all subjects (not only programming but anything else there is) implement more narrowed down system that would let them talk back to Google spider (sort of key tagging or GQL some sort of Google Query Language that would let admins describe what google boot see in more mechanical/technical language), and this way Google search results will be more precise, near to perfection! who goes beyond second results page?? I only found garbage after that! All I need is an answer to my question, not 50 pages of results. Accomplish that, Google, and I am stick to your search for next 10 years at least!
They already have a bunch of offices and representatives in numerous countries. Albeit, those people are mostly sales force.. if they expand those localized teams with marketing and intertwine them with local centers of media power they could humanize themselves with reasonable amount of money.
Comments
IMO, Google COULD tackle "social", but not with the same approach that worked with facebook. They ought to forget about facebook's approach and attack from another angle. I have some ideas how it could be done, but it's a bit of a conundrum to say the least.
I have some ideas how it could be done, but it's a bit of a conundrum to say the least.
Would you mind sharing some of that?
Sure, but I don't think my general idea would suit google (as of their current behaviour). Allow me to elaborate a bit.
Google has 'social' platform already - Gmail. However, what they have tried to do so far is to force 'social' elements into their current offerings, and they have tried to append external turn-key systems like orkut.
You can't force social behavior onto your users, as they have successfully demonstrated. As I see it, only two successful platforms so far, facebook and myspace (which died) had a different start. They started out from human element, which is people started banding together and dragging along their friends into it - onto a central place. Email is social too, but it isn't one central place, but more peer to peer.
What I think Google should do is to do something they have never done before. Humanize Google. Introduce customer support, active engagement with current user base, expand into traditional media, and not only with google ads, but with interactive shows based on google platform, editorialized part of google news, etc... only then will users start to feel google is something they can empathize with and concentrate around it vs only using their services and go away.
tl;dr; humanize google, bring human element to it. Actual humans into their services.
humanize google -- that will NEVER happen for pure economical reason.
you are not talking here about hiring a customer team of 50 folks answering the phone. you talking about half a million team of humans sticked to the phone 24/7 in order to accomplish that and succeed. I dont think AdSense revenue would cover the payroll and still keep GOOG stock going up.
here is the blueprint as of HOW google can win social: take me as an example: I am a web programmer, mostly php and mysql. google can determine that from my searches I am sure. but no matter how much I google I am still getting pages of C++ and Oracle results to my php/mysql problems.
To win social they should let webadmins of all sort of websites and all subjects (not only programming but anything else there is) implement more narrowed down system that would let them talk back to Google spider (sort of key tagging or GQL some sort of Google Query Language that would let admins describe what google boot see in more mechanical/technical language), and this way Google search results will be more precise, near to perfection! who goes beyond second results page?? I only found garbage after that! All I need is an answer to my question, not 50 pages of results. Accomplish that, Google, and I am stick to your search for next 10 years at least!
They already have a bunch of offices and representatives in numerous countries. Albeit, those people are mostly sales force.. if they expand those localized teams with marketing and intertwine them with local centers of media power they could humanize themselves with reasonable amount of money.