A Sneak Peak at Google Me?
August 30, 2010 by Evan Kline 
6 Comments
As we discussed a while back, Google is thought to be preparing its own social network, called “Google Me” by some. Smarterware recently published a slideshow from a senior researcher at Google, that might give us a glimpse at what to expect from Google Me.
The slideshow discusses how Facebook lumps all of your friends together, even though we really we have different types of friends. You might have family members, college friends, and work colleagues in your social network, but you might want your social network experience with each of them to be different. For example, those wild college photos might be great to share with your college friends, but not so great to share with your family or some of your coworkers.
Facebook does offer lists, but they’re meaningless when it comes time to post updates. You can choose only between publicizing updates to everyone, friends, friends of friends, or specific people.
Would a service that gives you finite control over different types of friends compel you to try it out? Or do you envision something like that being much too complicated?
What to Expect From “Google Me” [Smarterware]
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I would enjoy something like that, actually — especially if I can choose a default view or set up different “home pages” for each. I would want a “show me everything” feature too.
“Facebook does offer lists, but they’re meaningless when it comes time to post updates. You can choose only between publicizing updates to everyone, friends, friends of friends, or specific people.”
I can’t imagine Facebook letting this become a major point of differentiation. This seems like a rather simple thing to fix.
Kosmo @ The Soap Boxers´s last post ..Johnny’s College Football Picks
I would assume so, if it causes them to lose too many users. Facebook has increasingly shown a preference towards its users’ info being public, though, so it will take a loss of users to compel them to switch.
That’s very interesting. I agree with Kosmo that if that’s all that Google is bringing to the table then this will be going the way of Google Wave. That has to be too easy to copy. But then I’m thinking, why hasn’t Facebook done that already? It’s obviously useful.
Anyway, I wrote something a while back on my personal blog after checking out the Nexus app that showed exactly this idea – that we are really in a bunch of networks. If that app is still around I recommend checking it out as it is pretty interesting.
http://darrennegraeff.com/how-we-are-linked/
I checked out your post, Darren. I hadn’t heard of Nexus, but it sounds cool. I’m going go see if I can find it.
It looks like it shut down unfortunately.
http://apps.facebook.com/_nexus_/
You probably found that as well – there are a few alternatives out there it seems but I’m not sure how they compare. I really liked the visualizations of Nexus.