Google: making big social media moves

Tumblr.com user here, but it’s still microblogging to me!

If you want to get more than 5,000, I suggest you run for office in the US or Canada!

But we’re all saying “yay Google!” right now…what’s going to happen when Google does something bad? Yep, the same us will be screaming “WTF GOOGLE! WHY DO THEY HAVE A MONOPOLY ON EVERYTHING?!”

@40 “Who are YOU to tell me that I can only possibly know 200 people? That’s bullshit.”

What year do you graduate from high school? Seriously, this really reeks for trying hard to be the cool kid. Why would a person care how many “friends” another person has?

Jaiku! Good luck!

Google saw how YouTube grow so much in the last year that they decided to take all the clicks from YouTube and move it to their own yard.

Robert,

Number one I didn’t suggest that it was an “evil” plan to get you to add your real friends–I was referring to the actual point of Facebook, to map your real social graph. People you actually have relationships with.

And I didn’t say that you can’t KNOW more than 5,000 people–if you define “know” as “aware of.” My point was about relationships, I seriously doubt that you or anyone else can have a real personal relationship with that many people.

And yes Facebook is a great Rolodex, but thats not it’s intended primary function. I seriously doubt that they are worried about losing a ton of users because of the 5,000 contact limit. There aren’t that many people who really need to go beyond that–or even come close to it. You are a special case, maybe sometimes you forget that you’re not even close to the typical user. I suspect most people are more like myself who use Facebook to track about 200 of my friends and use an actual address book app to keep contacts on everyone else.

Yepp, Google is making a move further into the Social Networking arena. Orkut would be the natural starting point of course.

However, I still miss a wider approach from Google. Opening up the platform with APIs is one – yes. But if they intend to take a bite of the Social Graph opportunity I am susprised they do not have a richer solution for your contacts list than they have today.

http://thekillerattitude.com/2007/09/where-is-google-contacts.html

Also with respect to the maximum number of people one can have a real relationship with, look up Dunbars number. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

100% of my real world friends are on Orkut. Heck, even my gen (x-1) teachers are on it! Even those guys who don’t know how to switch on a friggin computer are on it.

But, y’know what? If you do get on orkut, you’ll get tired of life. Seriously. Very soon. The amount of jibberish going on there is maddening.

Oh, and, did I tell you that only 18+ people are allowed in there?

I’m very interested to see what Google can do here…. not the biggest fan of orkut to say the least.

I like the fact that Facebook puts a limit on the total # of friends I can have – does anyone really have 5000 friends? What is the true definition of a friend when the total # adds up to 5000?

I define a friend in Facebook as the people that I interact with and want to remain in touch with on a regular basis – I think it would be nearly impossible to do that with a huge number of friends and would defeat the purpose of my facebook profile. I like using Facebook as a means to connect in an implicit/passive manner – but I don’t want to do this with 5000 people.

@Robert Scobble: People you know is different from people that are your friend.

A bite of reality “If anyone really has 5000 friends they would not be sitting in from of a machine all day”! 365 days in a year/5000 “so called” friends…., think about it.

Anyone can make 50,000 online friends if they want to waste their time doing that and it makes them feel good, but we all know the true meaning of a friend so I should not have to explain it.

As for the Oct 10th post and I quote “Were Twitter’s technical problems too extensive for Google to swallow when they went shopping for a microblog service?”, use your head!!! I seriously doubt such a thought would enter Google exec’s minds, its a business decision, if Google would so desire they would certainly be able to sort out Twitter’s tech problems, its a money thing if you get my drift?

Last point before I get replies of (blind, tunnel vision & blatantly unintelligent) criticism (I’m Australian so don’t waste time pointing out spelling errors, I only spell American when coding sites…., because I have to!!!!). Orknut is big in Brazil but not in the U.S., big shock coming your way, it will be big in the U.S. Like it or not the huge majority of users on networking sites are not what most would consider I.T. literate (for example they are not the type that would read or even find this site interesting like we all have). They will jump on the bandwagon and follow the rest of the sheep, you may doubt me but do not underestimate the power of Google’s marketing strategy. They have some very smart people in the marketing & PR departments that know only too well how to prey on gullible people (gullible being a natural trait of all human beings).

By the way, I am not a fan of Google but I am a realist, I use Google search engine because it is the best around and when I need to find information quickly I would be made not to use it, whether I like it or not!

Thank you for listening and please feel free to vote for me should I decide to become only the second foreign born president of the USA behind Arnie (see I do have a sense of humour)!

Ok…., second last paragraph, last sentence should be “mad not to use it”. Its the whisky starting to kick in and before any comments on that I’m based in London (yes I’m still an Aussie) which means its 1.20am and not early evening like you have at the mo……, sorry……, the whisky again, better go before all credibility has gone….. again….. if it hasn’t already…..

Facebook should switch modes when someone has more than 1000 friends. Change from ‘friends’ to ‘connections’, and start charging money for the service. Hm, like LinkedIn.

But really Robert is just broken. He should be a Facebook app instead of pretending his persona is a real person or ‘friend’. Just add a Scoble app, I’m sure people will love to join.

And maybe some of the peopel who are actually your real friends will rejoin your facebook profile once the who ring list you have now evaporated.

Well post about social network and media.