Google to go plus-one better than Facebook
By Richard Waters
Published: April 13 2011 21:05 | Last updated: April 13 2011 21:05
Five years ago, Yahoo! had a plan for beating Google at its own game. It would encourage members of its huge online audience to vote for web pages they liked by “tagging” them. Out of this outpouring would come a more personal and social web, one that was filtered by Yahoo’s users rather than Google’s algorithms.
Fast forward to the present, and there’s a distinctly similar echo in what Google has come up with in its own latest attempt to counter a certain fast-growing social networking site.
Facebook’s “Like” buttons may have sprouted across the web over the past year, but if Google has its way we will all soon be “plus-one-ing” – the inelegant new phrase that describes its move into social, whereby we can click on the “+1” buttons due to appear on its search results and, eventually, other web pages.
The comparison with the now-struggling Yahoo, and the sight of Google copying one of Facebook’s more successful moves, raises the uncomfortable feeling that the search group is running out of ideas.
When Larry Page marked his elevation to chief executive this month with the blunt message to Googlers that a large part of their bonuses will be tied to the company’s success in social, it only added to a sense that urgency is turning to panic.
But it would be a mistake to write Google off. It has some prime assets already in place for its social push and it undeniably has the staying power. Also, it has more in common with Facebook than the usual “search algorithm v social network” contrast suggests. Both see themselves as utilities on the web, with a mission to help a large slice of the world’s population communicate and connect with things they’re interested in.
If Facebook’s key asset is its “social graph” – the web of its users’ personal connections – then Google has its own, implicit networks of relationships to mine. By tapping your most frequent Gmail connections, your list of friends on its Chat service and your phonebook on one of its Android devices, it has plenty of ways to divine your social relationships. It can supplement that by drawing on connections from services like Twitter.
Until now, Google’s main problem has been that it just hasn’t found anything very compelling to do with this information.
That’s where the “+1” voting system comes in. Smartly, it got a low-key launch (lessons learnt here from the debacle around Buzz, the rudimentary social networking service that attracted criticism last year over its handling of privacy). Websites will have good reasons to display the +1 buttons: votes will feed into Google’s search system and could help their rankings.
More of an issue is what users will get out of clicking those buttons – there is no social networking site to collect all those preferences and display them to friends. But as Google starts to show what your contacts have “plus-owned” in the search results you see, the draw could strengthen.
There are other pieces that need to fall into place. Google needs more users to set up profiles and add personal information about themselves, as they do on Facebook. Then, the value of having a Google profile should start to become more apparent.
To feed this virtuous circle, Google needs to find many more things for users to share. Inevitably, that will mean finding a way to draw in an equivalent of the Facebook status update – something that Buzz has so far failed to do.
An acquisition of Twitter still makes sense, which would bring a new brand and an extra dimension in much the way YouTube did. It would have the added benefit of marrying a company which has become a byword for the failure to find an effective business model, with one that is sitting on a geyser of cash.
Larry Page’s “social bonus” kicks in for Googlers in the final quarter of this year. That might be a little early to see real results from the latest social push, but the message he has sent is not unreasonable: Google does not need to build a new social network from scratch and is closer than it may look to seeing some results.
None of this is to belittle the severity of the challenge. Simply welding social behaviour on to an existing web service – as Apple has proved by trying to attach its Ping music network to iTunes – does not work unless users see some compelling benefits.
Google has plenty of ways to make that mistake. Properties like YouTube, Android and the Chrome browser could become powerful platforms for promoting and spreading its social services. But force-feeding users with Facebook alternatives they don’t want or need is a recipe for disaster – as seen with the privacy row around Buzz.
The question is not whether Google “gets” social – it is whether it is as attuned to, and respectful of, its users’ interests as it claims.
Richard Waters is the FT’s West Coast managing editor
richard.waters@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Friday, April 15, 2011
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Facebook to expand with ‘social plugins’
Facebook to expand with ‘social plugins’By Chris Nuttall in San Francisco
Published: April 22 2010 00:38 | Last updated: April 22 2010 00:38
Facebook has launched a major initiative to extend its influence with “social plugins” that embed its social networking service more deeply inside third-party websites.
The plugins are part of an “Open Graph” strategy announced on Wednesday by Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive, at Facebook’s f8 developer conference in San Francisco. Open Graph is an evolution of Social Graph and Facebook Connect, and extends to the web at large.
Mr Zuckerberg said the web existed today as a series of largely unstructured links between pages, but Facebook’s initiative would put people at the centre of the web and provide personally meaningful connections between people and things.
Open Graph was the most transformative thing Facebook had done for the web, he said.
“We’re building towards a web where the default is social – every application and product will be designed from the ground up to use [people’s] real identity and friends.”
Facebook’s power play is likely to be welcomed by website owners and developers but regarded warily by rivals such as Twitter and Google, which launched its Buzz social networking service this year.
With more than 400m members, Facebook’s plugins can drive substantial traffic to sites that install them and boost their advertising revenues. Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook itself would not place ads inside the new features.
The largest social network said it was launching Open Graph with 30 partners spanning categories from books and movies to celebrities and athletes with sites such as CNN’s news site and the ESPN sport site embedding its social plugins.
Facebook users visiting the sites could click a “Like” button on stories they want to share with friends and would see pop-up windows showing friends who had also liked something. They could also see their friends’ activity on the site and share comments through other plugins.
Liking a movie on the IMDB film website would include that movie in the user’s interests in their Facebook profile, with a link back to the original site.
“We think over the next few years that the connections between people and the things they care about will play as big a part as hyperlinks do today in defining people’s internet experiences,” said Bret Taylor, head of Facebook Platform products.
Open Graph will replace Facebook Connect, which allowed users to log in to other websites using their Facebook credentials.
Mr Zuckerberg told a news conference he was eliminating the Facebook Connect brand.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.
Published: April 22 2010 00:38 | Last updated: April 22 2010 00:38
Facebook has launched a major initiative to extend its influence with “social plugins” that embed its social networking service more deeply inside third-party websites.
The plugins are part of an “Open Graph” strategy announced on Wednesday by Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive, at Facebook’s f8 developer conference in San Francisco. Open Graph is an evolution of Social Graph and Facebook Connect, and extends to the web at large.
Mr Zuckerberg said the web existed today as a series of largely unstructured links between pages, but Facebook’s initiative would put people at the centre of the web and provide personally meaningful connections between people and things.
Open Graph was the most transformative thing Facebook had done for the web, he said.
“We’re building towards a web where the default is social – every application and product will be designed from the ground up to use [people’s] real identity and friends.”
Facebook’s power play is likely to be welcomed by website owners and developers but regarded warily by rivals such as Twitter and Google, which launched its Buzz social networking service this year.
With more than 400m members, Facebook’s plugins can drive substantial traffic to sites that install them and boost their advertising revenues. Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook itself would not place ads inside the new features.
The largest social network said it was launching Open Graph with 30 partners spanning categories from books and movies to celebrities and athletes with sites such as CNN’s news site and the ESPN sport site embedding its social plugins.
Facebook users visiting the sites could click a “Like” button on stories they want to share with friends and would see pop-up windows showing friends who had also liked something. They could also see their friends’ activity on the site and share comments through other plugins.
Liking a movie on the IMDB film website would include that movie in the user’s interests in their Facebook profile, with a link back to the original site.
“We think over the next few years that the connections between people and the things they care about will play as big a part as hyperlinks do today in defining people’s internet experiences,” said Bret Taylor, head of Facebook Platform products.
Open Graph will replace Facebook Connect, which allowed users to log in to other websites using their Facebook credentials.
Mr Zuckerberg told a news conference he was eliminating the Facebook Connect brand.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
FT.com / Technology - Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google
FT.com / Technology - Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google: "Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google"
Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google
By Chris Nuttall and David Gelles in San Francisco
Published: March 16 2010 13:15 | Last updated: March 17 2010 00:10
Social networking website Facebook has capped a year of phenomenal growth by overtaking Google’s popularity among US internet users, with industry data showing it has scored more visits on its home page than the search engine.
It is the first time that Facebook.com has enjoyed a weekly lead over Google.com. The lead may be slim, but it has become inevitable as Facebook’s popularity has grown rapidly from just over 2 per cent of visits a year ago. Heather Dougherty of Hitwise said that Facebook had “reached an important milestone” with the weekly figures.
Facebook’s membership has more than doubled in the past year, passing the 200m mark last April and 400m in February.
“The true value of Facebook and social networks is just becoming clear to marketers,” said Augie Ray, analyst at Forrester Research.
Although Facebook is enjoying rapid growth, it is only beginning to cash in on its success. Revenues at the social media company are estimated to be in the range of $1bn to $1.5bn this year, while Google took in $23.7bn last year.
Google has responded to the ascendancy of the social networking site with its own Buzz service last month. Buzz allows users to add status updates, friends, pictures, videos, location information, comments and links to other networking sites. Buzz, though, has struggled with privacy concerns just as Facebook has been criticised for encouraging members to reveal personal data to search engines.
The Hitwise figures only cover visits to the Google.com site, meaning that services such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps and searches carried out in a box in a browser toolbar are excluded. Taking all Google properties into account, the internet company accounted for 11.03 per cent of US website visits last week, compared with 10.98 per cent for Yahoo properties and 7.07 per cent for Facebook, according to Hitwise.
Facebook’s trajectory suggests that it will soar ahead of Google.com in the coming months. However, social networking sites have fallen in the past. Google.com had led since September 2007, when it overtook News Corp’s MySpace.com.
Internet users worldwide spent more than five-and-a-half hours a month on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82 per cent increase over the previous year, according to the Nielsen Company research firm.
US users spent nearly six-and-a-half hours on Facebook compared with fewer than two-and-a-half hours on Google.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google
By Chris Nuttall and David Gelles in San Francisco
Published: March 16 2010 13:15 | Last updated: March 17 2010 00:10
Social networking website Facebook has capped a year of phenomenal growth by overtaking Google’s popularity among US internet users, with industry data showing it has scored more visits on its home page than the search engine.
It is the first time that Facebook.com has enjoyed a weekly lead over Google.com. The lead may be slim, but it has become inevitable as Facebook’s popularity has grown rapidly from just over 2 per cent of visits a year ago. Heather Dougherty of Hitwise said that Facebook had “reached an important milestone” with the weekly figures.
Facebook’s membership has more than doubled in the past year, passing the 200m mark last April and 400m in February.
“The true value of Facebook and social networks is just becoming clear to marketers,” said Augie Ray, analyst at Forrester Research.
Although Facebook is enjoying rapid growth, it is only beginning to cash in on its success. Revenues at the social media company are estimated to be in the range of $1bn to $1.5bn this year, while Google took in $23.7bn last year.
Google has responded to the ascendancy of the social networking site with its own Buzz service last month. Buzz allows users to add status updates, friends, pictures, videos, location information, comments and links to other networking sites. Buzz, though, has struggled with privacy concerns just as Facebook has been criticised for encouraging members to reveal personal data to search engines.
The Hitwise figures only cover visits to the Google.com site, meaning that services such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps and searches carried out in a box in a browser toolbar are excluded. Taking all Google properties into account, the internet company accounted for 11.03 per cent of US website visits last week, compared with 10.98 per cent for Yahoo properties and 7.07 per cent for Facebook, according to Hitwise.
Facebook’s trajectory suggests that it will soar ahead of Google.com in the coming months. However, social networking sites have fallen in the past. Google.com had led since September 2007, when it overtook News Corp’s MySpace.com.
Internet users worldwide spent more than five-and-a-half hours a month on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82 per cent increase over the previous year, according to the Nielsen Company research firm.
US users spent nearly six-and-a-half hours on Facebook compared with fewer than two-and-a-half hours on Google.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Facebook targeted Web 2.0 start-up Twitter (FT.com)
Facebook targeted Web 2.0 start-up Twitter
By Richard Waters in San Francisco and Tim Bradshaw in Oxford
Published: November 24 2008 21:41 | Last updated: November 24 2008 21:41
Twitter, the micro-blogging company that has become one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched start-ups, recently held talks about an acquisition by social networking company Facebook.
The negotiations, which put a valuation of as much as $500m on the 2½-year-old private company, could throw a fresh spotlight on its rapid growth and prompt other big internet companies to consider bids.
Twitter has become a leading light of the Web 2.0 generation of consumer internet companies, whose services rely more heavily on communication and social interaction than the original dotcoms. Users of Twitter post short messages of up to 140 characters about what they are doing, and the “tweets” are broadcast to anyone who wants to sign up to follow them.
However, its name has also become synonymous with the lack of revenue in the Web 2.0 world. Despite its passionate following among Silicon Valley’s digerati, and an audience that is now growing rapidly, Twitter has yet to make any money.
The talks were first reported by the AllThingsD blog and confirmed on Monday by two people familiar with the situation.
Facebook’s approach to Twitter is set to raise as many questions about the bidder’s value as it does about the target. The social networking site offered to pay for the acquisition in stock, according to one person close to the situation, but putting a value on its shares proved controversial.
Had it used the $15bn valuation at which Microsoft bought a stake in Facebook last year, it would have valued the Twitter purchase at $500m, though that investment was seen as a high-water mark for Web 2.0.
Speaking on Monday at a gathering of internet entrepreneurs at Oxford University, Chris Sacca, a Twitter investor, questioned the valuation. “If Facebook brings $500m of stock to the table to buy Twitter, the first thing you talk about is whether that stock is worth $500m or not,” he said.
However, one person close to the situation suggested that the $15bn valuation for Facebook was the top end of a range of values the two companies talked about, implying that a deal might have valued both Facebook and Twitter at a much lower level.
Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, would not comment on the talks, but suggested that the company wanted to remain independent to build on its messaging service.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
By Richard Waters in San Francisco and Tim Bradshaw in Oxford
Published: November 24 2008 21:41 | Last updated: November 24 2008 21:41
Twitter, the micro-blogging company that has become one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched start-ups, recently held talks about an acquisition by social networking company Facebook.
The negotiations, which put a valuation of as much as $500m on the 2½-year-old private company, could throw a fresh spotlight on its rapid growth and prompt other big internet companies to consider bids.
Twitter has become a leading light of the Web 2.0 generation of consumer internet companies, whose services rely more heavily on communication and social interaction than the original dotcoms. Users of Twitter post short messages of up to 140 characters about what they are doing, and the “tweets” are broadcast to anyone who wants to sign up to follow them.
However, its name has also become synonymous with the lack of revenue in the Web 2.0 world. Despite its passionate following among Silicon Valley’s digerati, and an audience that is now growing rapidly, Twitter has yet to make any money.
The talks were first reported by the AllThingsD blog and confirmed on Monday by two people familiar with the situation.
Facebook’s approach to Twitter is set to raise as many questions about the bidder’s value as it does about the target. The social networking site offered to pay for the acquisition in stock, according to one person close to the situation, but putting a value on its shares proved controversial.
Had it used the $15bn valuation at which Microsoft bought a stake in Facebook last year, it would have valued the Twitter purchase at $500m, though that investment was seen as a high-water mark for Web 2.0.
Speaking on Monday at a gathering of internet entrepreneurs at Oxford University, Chris Sacca, a Twitter investor, questioned the valuation. “If Facebook brings $500m of stock to the table to buy Twitter, the first thing you talk about is whether that stock is worth $500m or not,” he said.
However, one person close to the situation suggested that the $15bn valuation for Facebook was the top end of a range of values the two companies talked about, implying that a deal might have valued both Facebook and Twitter at a much lower level.
Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, would not comment on the talks, but suggested that the company wanted to remain independent to build on its messaging service.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Friday, November 09, 2007
Facebook Makes a Large Bet to Reinvent Advertising
Facebook Makes a Large Bet to Reinvent Advertising
Facebook bills its new initiative as the future of advertising. Success is far from certain and depends on subtle implementation details and uncharted areas of consumer behavior.
Facebook bills its new initiative as the future of advertising. Success is far from certain and depends on subtle implementation details and uncharted areas of consumer behavior.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Google Takes First Step in Face-off With Facebook
Google Takes First Step in Face-off With Facebook
The OpenSocial initiative launches Google's long-awaited counterstrike to the Facebook challenge. This limited-scope specification is just an early step in what will be a prolonged battle in the social-platform market.
The OpenSocial initiative launches Google's long-awaited counterstrike to the Facebook challenge. This limited-scope specification is just an early step in what will be a prolonged battle in the social-platform market.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Saga gets hip with a zone for silver surfers
FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Saga gets hip with a zone for silver surfers
Saga gets hip with a zone for silver surfers
By Ben Fenton
Published: October 31 2007 02:27 | Last updated: October 31 2007 02:27
It is not so much a cool internet community as a hip replacement for a social life: today, maturity’s riposte to Facebook comes of age.
If you want to get in with the gin crowd, it seems you should sign up for Saga Zone, which even in its secretive trial stages has enthralled thousands of silver surfers.
On Wednesday night, “zoners” will not be sending each other virtual vampire masks or Hallowe’en superpokes like Facebook friends. They are more likely to be swapping recipes for pumpkin soup.
But that does not mean customers of Saga, the insurance-to-holidays group owned by the Permira, CVC and Charterhouse private equity houses, are the shrinking violets of the web. Alongside the forums discussing topics such as “over-wintering begonias”, there are groups for “mature dating” or debating the relative sexual allure of pouches and thongs. When Zoners discuss “contacting my ex”, they are not proposing a seance.
Already, 13,000 of the 650,000 Saga magazine subscribers have signed up to the trial Zone and this vast database of experience is well ahead of its youthful counterparts in innovation.
“Very early on we had a virtual party,” Rupert Miles, chief executive, publishing, said. “About two dozen zoners arranged to ‘meet’ online. The girls got together first to ‘dress up’. Everyone was allowed a virtual guest – Helen Mirren was popular with the men and George Clooney for the ladies – and just spent a few hours gassing about nothing, as you would at a party.”
The Saga Zone has already had its first “flashmob”, a meeting organised online, but held in real life. It was conducted, however, at a comfortable hotel in Malta.
May Murray, a 64-year-old zoner from Glasgow, said: “It has certainly expanded my social life. I switch it on every single morning. I think my children, who are in their 40s, are quite envious and would like to join, but they can’t because they are too young.”
The generation gap strikes again.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Saga gets hip with a zone for silver surfers
By Ben Fenton
Published: October 31 2007 02:27 | Last updated: October 31 2007 02:27
It is not so much a cool internet community as a hip replacement for a social life: today, maturity’s riposte to Facebook comes of age.
If you want to get in with the gin crowd, it seems you should sign up for Saga Zone, which even in its secretive trial stages has enthralled thousands of silver surfers.
On Wednesday night, “zoners” will not be sending each other virtual vampire masks or Hallowe’en superpokes like Facebook friends. They are more likely to be swapping recipes for pumpkin soup.
But that does not mean customers of Saga, the insurance-to-holidays group owned by the Permira, CVC and Charterhouse private equity houses, are the shrinking violets of the web. Alongside the forums discussing topics such as “over-wintering begonias”, there are groups for “mature dating” or debating the relative sexual allure of pouches and thongs. When Zoners discuss “contacting my ex”, they are not proposing a seance.
Already, 13,000 of the 650,000 Saga magazine subscribers have signed up to the trial Zone and this vast database of experience is well ahead of its youthful counterparts in innovation.
“Very early on we had a virtual party,” Rupert Miles, chief executive, publishing, said. “About two dozen zoners arranged to ‘meet’ online. The girls got together first to ‘dress up’. Everyone was allowed a virtual guest – Helen Mirren was popular with the men and George Clooney for the ladies – and just spent a few hours gassing about nothing, as you would at a party.”
The Saga Zone has already had its first “flashmob”, a meeting organised online, but held in real life. It was conducted, however, at a comfortable hotel in Malta.
May Murray, a 64-year-old zoner from Glasgow, said: “It has certainly expanded my social life. I switch it on every single morning. I think my children, who are in their 40s, are quite envious and would like to join, but they can’t because they are too young.”
The generation gap strikes again.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
Facebook Wins Big as Microsoft Validates Social-Platform Value
Facebook Wins Big as Microsoft Validates Social-Platform Value
The emerging social-platform wars ratcheted up a notch when, in a long-awaited development, Microsoft struck a deal to invest $240 million in Facebook.
The emerging social-platform wars ratcheted up a notch when, in a long-awaited development, Microsoft struck a deal to invest $240 million in Facebook.
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