Can Google Get Social Networking Right?
The company has many social projects, but may struggle to improve on Facebook. — Rumors that Google is building a new social network have persisted since late June, when Kevin Rose, CEO of Digg.com, posted on Twitter that the Web giant was working on a challenger to Facebook.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the third act of a question that has run since at least July 2007, when commentary argued Google needed to fix its social products and later that same year speculated it could still achieve social network domination. The current round began in late June 2010, when Digg CEO Kevin Rose tweeted that Google was building a Facebook challenger, and the Wall Street Journal reported on Google developing a rival in late July.
Crucially, the project remains unconfirmed — Google has not acknowledged any social network, and Technology Review's framing is skeptical: many social projects, but a steep climb against Facebook's incumbent scale. Meanwhile Twitter is moving on its own sharing layer with an official Tweet Button, and Google's confirmed August moves (Voice Actions on Android, the joint Google-Verizon net neutrality proposal) show a company spending attention everywhere except, publicly, social.
First-order effects
- Facebook faces no announced competitor yet — the pressure comes from rumor itself, which keeps press and developer attention fixed on whether Google will enter rather than on Facebook's product roadmap.
Second-order effects
- Twitter's official Tweet Button positions it to own lightweight link-sharing while Google and Facebook fight over full-profile networking, carving out adjacent territory neither giant controls directly.
Third-order effects
- If Google does launch, it confronts a liquidity network effect problem every challenger has failed: users go where their graph already exists, meaning feature parity alone historically has not dislodged an entrenched social platform.
The trend: Social networking is consolidating around incumbents whose existing user graphs compound faster than challengers can recruit, pushing would-be entrants like Google toward differentiated angles rather than direct clones.