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Based on a recent comScore report it looks like Facebook’s invasion and conquest of mainland India is all but a foregone conclusion. With Zuckerberg’s brainchild outpacing the growth of Google’s Orkut by a factor of 10, the over 33 million member strong Indian social networking market appears to be slipping into the hands of Facebook. This changing tide leaves Orkut with one last stronghold high in the mountains of Brazil. Given Facebook’s obscene growth rate, is a world social networking monopoly inevitable? Does the legend of Google Me have the will to break the stranglehold and offer up a legitimate alternative? Where does Orkut stand in all this? Here are some ideas and strategic suggestions to create competition in the social networking market.

The Dilemma of a Closed Garden
A wise man once said, “A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” In the realm of social networking, some might suggest that if the “harbor” is organized well and used by many, then there are merits to sticking to what works; in this case Facebook. What happens if the harbor master hates red sails and decides to charge a tariff for traveling between the shores? This metaphor speaks to the potential problems of letting one organization control the entire social networking arena. We all know that both Facebook and Google are in it for the money. Ultimately, having more than one legitimate choice gives the consumer at least some decision power. With other distributed social network initiatives like Diaspora on the horizon, the future still holds hope for a less money oriented solution to your social networking needs. The more portable your social networking information is, the less control an outside organization will have over your freedom of choice.

Privacy is in its Death Throws
As a consumer, you should know that all of these companies are recording a massive amount of data about your personal interactions. While this data currently concerns mainly the online world, new developments like Facebook’s Location Service are guaranteed to change things. Imagine the day when companies will know where you are at all times, who you are spending time with and the exact time intervals for each of these activities. That day was yesterday. Ultimately, for companies in the social networking space, data is money. The more data they capture, the more money they can squeeze out of their user base. Facebook, Google and other players in the social networking space have to make strategic decisions about how they capture this data. Are the new programs opt out? Do they make the controls to toggle off certain privacy settings intentionally hard to find? You bet they do. Each of these companies has a decision to make about where they stand on the privacy spectrum. Imagine if a company’s stance on privacy actually revolved around letting the user decide. A more open privacy strategy might give users incentive to make a change.

The legend of Google Me
If you have spent any time in Silicon Valley or ventured into the blogosphere recently you may have heard the chatter; sweet rumors of a true challenger to Facebook’s stranglehold on the social networking space. What is Google Me? A better question is what does Google Me have to be in order to fulfill its promise of a new tomorrow. Ultimately Google Me has to be something that people are both familiar with and comfortable using. Let’s think of an example that fits those requirements. How about Facebook? A true Facebook clone is a scary prospect. Will most people see it as just a knock off?

Where does Orkut figure in to all of this?
With over 100 million active users, Google would be foolish to cut the cord on the Orkut user base. Ultimately, if Google Me is going to work, they will need to seed the new service. Building a user base for a social networking site requires getting massive amounts of people to sign up, establish social connections and fill out a wealth of personal information. Where could Google Me possibly get a kick start of users? How about building the service so that user info can easily, perhaps automatically, be ported over from Orkut? While they are at it, why not do the same with Gmail. Google currently has most of the core information to build a profile for hundreds of millions of users. If they can make joining the service a push button decision, then perhaps they can chip away at the networking effect that is powering the Facebook phenomenon.

In the past, Google has adopted features from Facebook and incorporated them into the Orkut Service. This cloning strategy may be the focus of the Google Me effort. If the Japanese can do it with cars, who’s to say the same strategy will not work with social networks. Ultimately, to gain insight into what works for social networking Google may have to go to the source; engineers with direct experience in social networking development. To build a true Facebook killer Google may want to fire up some hiring software and target Facebook employees. Tapping the Facebook brain trust may be a critical competitive maneuver for overtaking the social networking giant.

As Facebook continues its dominance in the social space, the honest chances of Google Me rising to prominence are slim at best. Google’s best chances of making an impact with Google Me will require building something that has a small learning curve and can incorporate assets they have already developed through sites like Orkut. Only time will tell if the social networking stronghold is unbreakable in the immediate future, but for the sake on competition, let’s wish Google the best of luck.

Right now, Google’s famous ‘Do no evil’ mantra seems irrelevant, even hypocritical.  I’d like to take a look at Google’s 10 guiding corporate philosophy principles and see how relevant they are in light of their new ‘net neutrality’ proposal. In the last update to their corporate page Google stated: “We first wrote these “10 things” several years ago. From time to time we revisit this list to see if it still holds true. We hope it does – and you can hold us to that. (September 2009)”

Well, Google – we do hold you to that, and I think it’s time you took a review of this page and ask yourself if these items are still true.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

Google, you clearly have strayed from your path of focusing on the user.  In fact, you seem more focused on colluding with huge penny-pinching businesses nowadays.  If you focused on users, you never would have reversed direction with Android – an open mobile OS that was said to eventually free users from the chains of giant mobile carriers.

Today, we are seeing the opposite with Android; users are getting tied to lengthy carrier contracts through offerings of super phones (recently Verizon’s Incredible and Sprint’s EVO) which are filled with irremovable bloatware.  Google, this definitely is not focusing on the user – it is focusing on making carriers and corporations happy.

2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.

Google, admit it – you are trying to become more than a one trick pony.  No longer are you purely focused on search, but you’ve now got your tentacles wrapped around the mobile sector (among other things). We were OK that you went in a different direction to build Android (even if we knew it was just another way to display your ads to users), but you seem really confused now.

You’re kind of like Michael Jordan – you were really good at basketball, but when you started playing baseball everyone started to realize that you suck at it.  Google, you’re starting to suck at stuff.

3. Fast is better than slow.

I’ll give you this one Google – you are sticking with this philosophy.  In your ‘net neutrality’ writeup you propose creating a new second internet that runs in the fast lane, allowing companies to develop innovative and wonderful pay-for services that require more bandwidth. Only problem is: if there is fast lane it leaves the old internet, the one that most people use, stuck in traffic.

4. Democracy on the web works.

Google, how democratic would the new internet you envisioned really be? I can see it now: carriers denying apps that don’t suit their purposes and people denied internet services because they aren’t paying for the ‘premium’ internet.  Google, if democracy means letting businesses walk all over people by denying them freedom of choice in broadband and the wireless spectrum, then by all means, democracy works.

5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.

This one is true Google.  You know that you’ve hit on something really big with this mobile thing. People need answers everywhere they go, and now that your Android is the #1 selling mobile OS in the United States, they can conveniently Google anything, from anywhere (and click on the ads to prove it!) Although you tout Android as being ‘open source’ – it seems that your services like Google search and Gmail are a ‘must add’ to any Android handset on the market.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

To address this one I’d like to refer to Huffington Post writer Marvin Ammori: “You have to hand it to Google. Going from “Don’t Be Evil” to “Greedier than BP” overnight is a pretty impressive trick.”

7. There’s always more information out there.

Google, you’re making us question who will have access to this information in the future.  Your CEO Eric Schmidt referred to the proposed second pay-for internet: “This means that broadband providers can work with other players to develop new services. It is too soon to predict how these new services will develop, but examples might include health care monitoring, the smart grid, advanced educational services, or new entertainment and gaming options.” So these fantastic new health care and educational services will only be available to people willing to pay for it?

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

Apparently not for people in China.  Although you made a short stand by pulling your service from China due to censorship disputes, you eventually gave in.  It seems that the prospect of tapping China’s huge market was too alluring for you to stand up for what was right.   This situation seems vaguely familiar: throwing internet freedom aside in order to try and make more money…

9. You can be serious without a suit.

Google, I’m not sure anyone buys this hippy-dippy corporate culture bullshit anymore. Don Draper wears a damn fine suit and I’d love to see his take on Adwords.

10. Great just isn’t good enough.

As much praise as you get for your algorithm, there are several other search options out there (Bing in particular) that have been gaining on you in the past year.  I don’t think you realize how many people use Google simply because ‘its Google’.

They liked the way you did things simply, they liked the idea of not going ‘corporate’ with Microsoft, they liked how you stood for what was right.  In other words, people found a reason to like you.  If people start to realize that you are just another corporate giant out to make a profit I wouldn’t underestimate their ability to realize that “Google just isn’t good enough” anymore.

For of us who work in the world of SEO & PPC Marketing, its safe to say that we use a ton of Google’s products.  Gmail, Adwords, Google Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Voice, and Analytics are just a few of Google’s tools that we utilize on an everyday basis.

One problem we’ve encountered over the years is the logistical nightmare of managing a ton of Google accounts at the same time.  You’re signed into your Adwords My Client Center account in Chrome, Personal Gmail account in Firefox and a client’s Google Local account in IE.  It becomes quite a hassle.

Finally, Google has started to make some headway on this problem by letting a user sign into multiple Google accounts at once, all from one browser window.  Simply go to your Google Account Settings, and switch the ‘multiple sign in’ button to ‘on.’  It looks like Google is still working on getting some extra features working in multiple accounts like Docs and Spreadsheets, but this is a great first step.  Way to go Google!

Google just announced the inclusion of real time search results that include Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and a number of blogs on their results pages.  This news isn’t shocking, as Google was a step behind Bing to tap the real time web and pretty much obligated to take a stab at it.

This is some big news, given that Google is by far the most utilized search engine.  One affected eco-system will be the realm of Search Engine Optimization.  While the old method of SEO primarily targets the ’static web,’ a new brand of Real Time SEO needs to evolve to address the ‘real time web’.

Real Time SEO

SEO is essentially maximizing the potential of a website to be indexed by Google based on a number of factors the algorithm takes into account when ranking sites, including the number of incoming links, title tags, keywords,  updated content, etc.

The Mountain View crew claims that real time search will utilize factors such as “author quality,” “probability of relevance” and “query hotness,” in order to determine which results pop.   These new factors, among others, will be the guiding principles of real time SEO, a process that is sure to be exacted from this point forward.

Sure, the social web – including twitter, facebook, myspace, and blog articles – have been an integral piece of SEO work for some time now. Utilizing social media pathways to provide extended exposure to a website has been important.  However, these efforts have always been somewhat ephemeral in comparison to the bulk of a search engine optimization campaign.  With the advent of Google’s real time web, this is about to change.

Real time search results could bring as much, if not more, traffic to a website than standard indexing on any given day.  This means making a website relevant and fresh through updates will become even more important.  There are sure to be other tactics and strategies that emerge as real time search evolves.  I’ll  be sure to keep an eye out for these results and post the findings.  In the meantime, feel free to let me know your thoughts on the subject!

Here’s to Google Docs

Open Collaboration

At your finger tips

One thing you should know about the Insight Forge team here in San Francisco: we’re all pretty big Google Document devotees.  We utilize Google Docs for pretty much everything – idea brainstorms, camping trip supply lists , brownie recipes, time spreadsheets, you name it.

If you own a small business, Google documents provides a forum for you to collaborate in real time between team members or directly with your clients.   For example, if you’re a chef and want to send a revised menu out to your staff, a Google Document would be the perfect place to express your thoughts.  You could add notes, and they could respond with questions to prepare for the menu’s release.

Most of the hitches we’ve encountered have to do with formatting between Google Docs and MS Word or MS Excel.   In an ideal world we would never need to use Word or Excel, and all of our writing could take place on Docs.

Google just released a new feature that allows complete folders to be shared, each containing multiple documents and spreadsheet under one umbrella.  This further promotes the easy collaboration and quick access that Google Documents excels at (no pun intended).

So… cheers to Google Docs!