Google launches social networking initiative, more Farmville than Facebook (Engadget)
This is all speculation and ideas here, but based on the news in the link above, Google has a huge opportunity here. Imagine, they come out with a social gaming network like the link says and with cross-platform compatibility onto all Android phones, Chrome OS, Macs, PCs for every single game. Once it's popular enough, Apple will even be forced to allow the App in the store (if they don't to begin with).
I imagine they could start out with a gaming network with rudimentary ties to other Facebook features (like Buzz, Chat, Gmail). Hell, they could even use Google Voice - imagine you meet a chick on one of the games and you both figure out you live nearby (or, for the more prudish, two people think they could become "good friends"), Google Voice could automatically connect a call to both people and hide the phone numbers.
From here, Google has two options:
First they require a Gmail account, then they partner with Facebook and allow integration in some way like the other Apps that Facebook uses. I imagine it would go like this: to link your FB account to your Google Games account, you would have to accept an app in FB that opens up all of your personal data to Google. This way FB gets paid by Google for the partnership, Google gets even more in-depth information about their user base, consumers don't care because they're playing games across all of their platforms... making Google's ads more accurate and thus increasing the value of Google ads.
Option 2:
If they want to go another route and try to compete with Facebook, they could include all of the rudimentary ties to other Google features and slowly start adding more and more personalization until they've essentially built up a less-complete understanding of their user-base. Then they suddenly crank it up to 11 and release tools to completely compete with Facebook.
This is all speculation and ideas here, but based on the news in the link above, Google has a huge opportunity here. Imagine, they come out with a social gaming network like the link says and with cross-platform compatibility onto all Android phones, Chrome OS, Macs, PCs for every single game. Once it's popular enough, Apple will even be forced to allow the App in the store (if they don't to begin with).
I imagine they could start out with a gaming network with rudimentary ties to other Facebook features (like Buzz, Chat, Gmail). Hell, they could even use Google Voice - imagine you meet a chick on one of the games and you both figure out you live nearby (or, for the more prudish, two people think they could become "good friends"), Google Voice could automatically connect a call to both people and hide the phone numbers.
From here, Google has two options:
First they require a Gmail account, then they partner with Facebook and allow integration in some way like the other Apps that Facebook uses. I imagine it would go like this: to link your FB account to your Google Games account, you would have to accept an app in FB that opens up all of your personal data to Google. This way FB gets paid by Google for the partnership, Google gets even more in-depth information about their user base, consumers don't care because they're playing games across all of their platforms... making Google's ads more accurate and thus increasing the value of Google ads.
Option 2:
If they want to go another route and try to compete with Facebook, they could include all of the rudimentary ties to other Google features and slowly start adding more and more personalization until they've essentially built up a less-complete understanding of their user-base. Then they suddenly crank it up to 11 and release tools to completely compete with Facebook.
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