OK, I’ve given you the reasons why Google will be successful this time, but why won’t what they announce tomorrow give Twitter or Facebook a buzz cut? Funny aside, I found this photo of Matt Mullenweg (the entrepreneur behind Wordpress) getting a buzz cut by using Google’s Social Circles search.

Some things that will keep Google from giving either Twitter or Facebook a buzz cut tomorrow (yes, I’ve been leaked some info about what’s coming tomorrow, so you gotta read in between the lines here):

1. Facebook has a defensible position in identity. Visit Huffington Post, or tons of other sites, and you’ll see the hooks that Facebook has that Google is NOT going to be able to rip out tomorrow, even if they have a really great offering.
2. Google isn’t trusted socially. Google is so large and has so much of our data that lots of us really don’t want Google to beat up on Facebook or Twitter.
3. Google doesn’t have Mark Zuckerberg. Mark gets how to hook people in through social tricks that very few people understand. FriendFeed, for instance, didn’t get it. Neither does Twitter. Most people think of Mark as an awesome businessperson or a tech genius (his major at Harvard was computer science), but most people don’t know his minor was Psychology. He studies how people work and how they get addicted to things at a level that Google’s founders struggle to understand. Google’s founders are also not nearly as comfortable around other people as Mark is. Everytime I meet Larry Page or Sergey Brin it’s tough to get them to talk socially. Mark, on the other hand, hugs people and is easier to just hang around and be personable with. That difference translates into the software that Facebook makes and how it hooks people in. Look at the tags on photos in Facebook, for instance. They hook people in in a way that no other service has yet.
4. Google has big company disease that Twitter never had. Watch Google tomorrow to integrate tons of services together in a way that looks like FriendFeed or Facebook. Of course YouTube videos, Google Maps, Picasa, and other things will be linked together in an aggregated feed. Now compare to Twitter. Twitter doesn’t have these “strategy taxes.” For all its sins (and Twitter has many sins) it has stayed pure and hasn’t strayed from 140-characters of text only.
5. Google doesn’t have developers that Facebook has. Facebook has a whole industry of folks who’ve made tons of applications for its users. Many of these are lame, yes, but others integrate Facebook with outside services and, better yet, hook you in to play games or do other things. Think about how Zynga got so big by selling virtual tractors inside a game on Facebook. That won’t exist on Google’s platform. At least not tomorrow. Tomorrow’s announcement is another platform move, look for the developer-centric stuff to come at its I/O Conference in April.
6. Google isn’t willing to piss its users off to get to the next level. Zuckerberg is willing to piss off Facebook’s users by changing the platform. He is in the midst of changing his platform once again from something that was only for private friends and family to something that’s more public so that Facebook can effectively compete in search (or, at least, be like Twitter and sell its feeds to Google or Microsoft). Google just isn’t willing to do that over and over.

Anyway, what will the Google service do? It’ll put a final nail into FriendFeed. Not that it needed it, that service is on its way down anyway, because its team has been focusing almost wholly on the larger Facebook service, but it will take the real time aggregated feed I liked there and bring it to Google in a nicer way.

What else will the Google service do? Build expectations around real time search. Mike Arrington was right when he said he needs much better filtering last night.

So, look for a neat system to come out that will be useful for many of us, but don’t look for it to take much buzz away from Twitter or Facebook.

Orkut. Used it? I did back in 2002, but since then? No one I know uses it.
Jaiku. Used it? I did back in 2006, but since then? No one I know uses it.
Dodgeball. Used it? I did back in 2006, but since then? No one I know uses it.

These are just a few of the failures Google has had trying to figure out the social space.

Tomorrow they’ve invited a ton of journalists to see a new social effort. The headline on top of Techmeme screams “Twitter killer.”

Um, I’ve learned in life that past behavior is the best predictor of future results.

So, why is Google going to succeed THIS time when its past experiences into social networking have failed and failed miserably?

I’ve identified a few:

1. This time they built everything in house. All the efforts above were purchased companies that were bolted onto existing infrastructure. This time? Look at the foundational pieces that Google has put in place. Google Profiles lets you enter the social networks you’re on. Check out mine, I’ve told it more already about myself than I’ve told Facebook. Then take a look at Google’s Social Circles. Social Circles is a clue that Google is studying ALL social networks, not just Facebook and Twitter. Some of my friends’ entries there have hundreds of websites and social networks listed there. It’ll be very interesting to see what Google does with those tomorrow. Hopefully a feed like FriendFeed had, along with real time search that’s filterable.

2. Employees on board. In 2006 whenever I talked with a Google employee about social stuff like Twitter or Facebook they’d turn their noses and say something derogatory. “That’s lame,” is what I heard over and over. It was clear that the rank and file Google employee just didn’t think Twitter or Facebook would ever challenge Google in any real way. I haven’t heard that attitude for quite a while now. You just have to look at Compete.com for why.

3. Mobile has made social more important. Look at the average mobile phone ad in the United States. A good percentage of them mention both Twitter and Facebook. Google can’t ignore this fact, especially now that Google is pushing Android on small devices and Chrome OS on bigger ones. Google knows that carriers see social networks as important things to push, so if Google can bring something new and interesting that will get people and brands to even talk about switching from Facebook or Twitter, it will be interesting to watch. Look for Google Contacts to add much better integration with all of the social networks that Google’s Social Circles algorithms are collecting. Yes, Palm got there first, but Palm doesn’t really matter, so look for Google to exploit that fact with really deep integration with contacts.

4. Twitter looks attackable. For the past few months we’ve all been watching Twitter’s engagement, traffic, and new feature releases. So far Twitter just hasn’t stepped up to the plate and lifted the drawbridge off of the moat surrounding their castle. Yes, Twitter is the best place now to find real time news, look at my list of world news brands for a great example of that. It’s also the best place to follow companies in real time, look at Dominic Jones’ list of 499 public companies for a great example of that. But look deeper and you’ll see a limping Twitter. Engagement just hasn’t taken off for a whole lot of reasons (let’s be honest, most people come to Twitter looking for celebrities, but look at Listorious’ list of Twittering celebrities done by Pete Cashmore and you’ll just see mostly lame tweets that don’t hook users much at all). I can see a whole lot of ways to beat Twitter, and if me and others, like Dave Winer can see ways that Twitter is beatable, then so can the engineers at Google.

5. Normal users are hungry. Normal users I talk to have now figured out Facebook. Most have played with Twitter and found it lacking, they tell me, but they are interested in other uses of social networking now. The market is primed for a new service to come along that shows us something new. Will Google deliver that tomorrow? Well, we only have a few hours to wait. But there is a latent unsatisfied interest, especially because Facebook has made its privacy stance confusing with its founder saying that we are in a post privacy world.

6. Location-based services are gathering attention. Well, at least they are being adopted by early adopters and, thanks to deals with TV networks and others, Foursquare, at least, is starting to move out of the early-adopter echo chamber and into the mainstream. Even Yelp has copied Foursquare’s “check in” metaphor and has primed the market for Google to come in and demonstrate some real leadership here. Interesting to note that Google Latitude has largely failed too when compared to the smaller upstarts. Will Google turn around its failures here?

7. Google HAS won in video and done fairly well in blogging. YouTube is a huge adoption success, even if it hasn’t yet made Google much money. That said, most of my friends are noticing that more and more users are coming into YouTube (indeed, even I’ve switched much of my video publishing to my channel there and I’m seeing strong subscriber and engagement growth). While services like Redux or Tweetmeme show you just videos that have been shared on Twitter and Facebook, look for Google to build on this strength.

8. Google has the best email and collaboration suite users. Whenever I speak at a conference of early adopters most people say they are now using Google Mail. That’s huge because these early adopters are the types that are willing to try new things and, better yet, are willing to tell their friends how cool they are. Look at how Google Wave — despite a crappy user interface — became very popular very quickly. Why? Because of this army of early adopters. See, email users are NOT all equal. Next time you are on a plane, look around you. Is the guy who is using Outlook 2003 using anything else that’s bleeding edge? Not very likely. Now look at the Gmail users, they are more likely to have a bleeding edge mobile phone, they are more likely to have a Windows 7 or Macintosh laptop. They are more likely to try things. They are more valuable because of that and is why Yahoo or Microsoft never were really able to capitalize on their hundreds of millions of email customers. Plus, look how Google integrated Docs and Spreadsheets into Gmail. Look for them to do the same thing with their social network efforts. It’ll be nuanced and addictive. If I were Gist or Xobni you bet I’d be worried about what’s coming tomorrow.

Anyway, this is all a long way of me saying that don’t expect Google to keep failing at this social networking thing. Its past behavior is NOT a predictor of what’s coming tomorrow.

The TED conference has given me a huge responsibility. They’ve handed me one of a small handful of press badges (as I understand it fewer than 10 are handed out every year). Regular tickets are $6,000 each and the conference was sold out more than a year ago (next year’s TED is already sold out).

They do put a major restraint on the press covering the event: no filming, or recording of sessions. Another restraint? No computers in the main session unless you want to sit in the back row. OK, I can live with that. So I doubt you’ll see a view of TED like I got of Chris Anderson, TED’s curator, in photo above, while he spoke at LeWeb.

But, really, this isn’t an event that generates news (except when last year Bill Gates released a bunch of mosquitos). If you’ve ever watched a TED Talk you’ll know that this isn’t about news, but is about expanding your mind. Coming up with new ideas. Hearing from people who are changing the world and being challenged to do the same with your own life.

In fact, they’ve asked me to not bring my computer or phones to the main sessions and just absorb the TED experience (Chris Anderson, the guy who runs TED, spoke at LeWeb a year ago and walked into the audience and told them all to close their laptops and listen, he really believes that we can’t learn if we’re multi-tasking and paying attention to email). As you might expect I’m thrilled at being asked to do this and I’m even going to report my time at the conference as vacation so that I won’t feel pressured to take care of Rackspace business while I’m there).

But when people invite you to a conference that costs everyone else $6,000 they are laying a huge responsibility to that person.

The question is, what’s the responsibility?

For me, I’m going to try to get as many interviews as I can outside of the main room. That’s one way of delivering value to you. But that’s just the baseline of the kind of responsibility that I’m feeling going into this. Can I step up my game this year? Can I improve the world my children are growing up in? That’s a little closer to the weight I feel through this gift.

Why is this such a big deal? Well, when I was first on musician Peter Himmelman’s show a couple of years ago I told him I try to live every day like a TED conference or a FOO Camp (O’Reilly’s famous conference where they invite a bunch of geeks to camp out over a weekend). I’ve been very fortunate to have had tons of great people in front of my camera lens (my off-the-cuff work is on YouTube, my pro work with Rocky Barbanica as cameraguy and producer is on building43).

That’s why I’m so excited and why I feel a ton of responsibility going into this event and I’ll try to bring you into the event as much as possible.

One thing, watch Chris Anderson’s Twitter account. He runs TED and is an inspiring figure in my life. He and his team has laid a heavy responsibility in front of me. How should I handle it? Here’s the schedule, who would you like me most to interview?

Siri is the most useful thing I’ve seen so far this year.

But after playing with it, getting an interview with its CEO (video here on building43) it’s even more important for you to pay attention to.

It is the best example of what the web will be.

Let’s go back.

Web 1994 was the “get me a domain and a page” era.
Web 2000 was the “make my page(s) interactive and put people on it” era.
Web 2010 is the “get rid of pages and glue APIs and people together” era.

Siri is the best example. First, it’s not a website. It’s an application you put on your phone (today iPhone, soon others like Android and Blackberry). Second, it isn’t a search engine, those are so 1998. It’s a system that assists you in your life.

Why is it so different?

Because on the back end they’ve stitched together a sizeable group of APIs from services like Opentable to Flightstats. With more coming soon.

Before it was common only for a couple of APIs to be joined together, here they have dozens. The system figures out which ones need to be used based on what you’re asking for.

That’s the other thing. You ask it to do stuff like “find me a pizza place near me” or “tell me the weather in Chicago this weekend.” With your voice or by typing commands.

Why is this really new and important? Don’t get confused by the awesome voice recognition engine that figures out your speech and what you want with pretty good accuracy. No, that’s not the really cool thing, although Microsoft and other companies have been working on natural language search for many years now and have been failing to come up with anything as useful as Siri.

No, the real secret sauce and huge impact on the future of the web is in the back end of this thing. A few months back the engineers at Siri gave me a secret look at how they stitch the APIs into the system. They’ve built a GUI that helps them hook up the APIs from, say, a new source like Foursquare, into the language recognition engine.

I just asked Siri “who checked into the Half Moon Bay Ritz?”

Now you and I know that we could look at Foursquare to find that answer, but Siri didn’t know the answer and brought me results from Bing. Very unsatisfying.

But the team now could hook up Foursquare’s APIs and make this question answerable.

Siri has developed a new programming language and GUI for the API web. This is huge, although it’s too bad that it’s so early and so hidden. We can’t help Siri’s developers out (if we could, maybe we could add Foursquare’s APIs tonight) and we can’t think of ways to make systems like Foursquare that would have APIs better designed to talk with a system like Siri’s.

I hope everyone takes a look at the video, it really shows the magic of this system, which is getting a lot of great reviews around the web. Most of the bloggers I’ve seen are slobbering over it, deservedly so.

This is the future of the web. How can we get there faster?

I’ve now heard from three separate Google employees that Google will release a news feed that will compete with Facebook and Twitter. I expect to see a demo at Google’s IO conference in April. For hints at what’s coming you MUST look at two foundation-level services:

1. Google Profiles. Google is asking you to voluntarily add all sorts of information about yourself. So far I’ve told it more than I’ve told Facebook or Twitter, here’s my Google Profile. Why? Because it’s available to all of you and this data gets added all sorts of places in the Google ecosystem. It shows up on searches for my name at the bottom of the page, for instance.

2. Google’s Social Circles Connections. This just turned on last week but most people in the industry have missed the importance of what’s here. First, now you can see that Google is crawling not just its own profile info, but the networks we’re building in Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, Flickr, LinkedIn, Last.fm, and other social networks. You can’t see it, but the list it’s showing me is yards long. If you’ve filled in your Google Profile info, like I have, it knows a TON about you. If you’ve followed me on Google Chat (I’m at scobleizer@gmail.com if you want to follow me) or Twitter or FriendFeed you’ll see my entry show up there.

What is next? Well, that Google Profile page is looking pretty lame, isn’t it? What if Google added a news feed? What if they made an even better rolodex than the ones available anywhere else? Remember what happened when I got the Google Nexus One phone? I entered my email address and all my contacts instantly appeared. Oh, yeah, you didn’t realize that Google was keeping all your contacts, did you?

You can see the battle being drawn right in front of you. This is why I believe FriendFeed decided to sell to Facebook. They knew this war was coming and they didn’t stand a chance against this epic decade-long battle that is just beginning between Google and Facebook.

But that’s just one front. What’s the other front?

Look at Techmeme right now. What’s the top story? One where Techcrunch is saying that Apple has another tablet coming. I love that everyone is giving Techcrunch heck for that, but I’ve heard these rumors too. But look further and you’ll find this article where Techcrunch is pointing to a Google site that has a first taste of Google Chrome OS-based Tablet PCs.

I’ve been hearing these rumors from friends in Asia who are working on a variety of machines for Google’s new OS. Both netbook-style machines, which Steve Jobs says are crappy, but also slates that compete head on with the iPad.

Google is arrogant enough to take on Apple and Facebook in the same year.

So, who will come out ahead in this war? Believe it or not, Apple and Facebook will actually get stronger during this fight.

Already look at the PR we’ve been hearing the past month. It’s been nothing but Apple and Google. Apple and Google. Apple and Google.

Where’s Microsoft? Where’s Nokia? Where’s RIM? Where’s Twitter? Where’s LinkedIn? These are the losers if the battle keeps being framed by Apple and Google and Google and Facebook.

But who else wins? Developers, developers, developers, developers. Why? Because I’m hearing rumors that Twitter is trying to charge developers for access to its full-firehose feed. How much? I can’t yet say because I haven’t confirmed the figures with Twitter but let’s just say that the figures I’m hearing are BIG. Six to eight figures big depending on the size of the company.

Now, what if Google turns on a microblogging/status message system like Facebook or Twitter have (already done on Google Chat, but I was thinking more like what Facebook looks like)? What happens if they also open up an application store (oh, already done on Android, or as they announced yesterday for business apps)? What happens if they give away access to these APIs for free instead of trying to charge developers tons of money?

Boom, boom, boom. Developers love having these kinds of platforms in competition to keep access up and pricing down.

How can Microsoft get noticed enough to be considered part of this war?

Steve Ballmer has to call in the Master Chief. You know, the guy in Halo. A new Halo is coming later this year (I saw a preview at CES and it’s pretty cool). I’m hearing rumblings that Microsoft will use its Xbox Live service to get into both battlefields later this year (Microsoft has moved many top executives and engineers over to a new team designed to compete more effectively with Apple’s iPhone). One by bringing out a Zune phone. If it has Xbox Live and an Xbox gaming platform on it, look out. That would be HUGE. The other one by opening up its Xbox Live service to be more like Facebook. Xbox Live already has a marketplace and already has a social network that’s very good and that most of us tech bloggers don’t pay enough attention to. One problem: I’m hearing from employees who work inside these teams that the political will to really develop a good Xbox-playing smartphone isn’t there. If that’s true, look for Microsoft to remain shut out of the battlefield and to remain a loser in the mobile space.

What can Nokia do?

I think the best shot Nokia has is its Maemo platform, but it alone isn’t enough. It needs more. I’d almost say that it needs to buy something like Twitter AND buy Palm. But both of those ideas are so ludicrous (or will be received that way inside Nokia) that they won’t happen. Look for Nokia to continue to sell lots of stuff to the rest of the world but be locked out of the most profitable markets.

Research in Motion?

First RIM has to realize it has a problem. The minute some Chinese company develops a great Android-based phone with a great keyboard they will start to see lots of people shift away. But for now, because RIM has the best keyboards in the business, they don’t need to really innovate too much. That said, I’m starting to hear rumors that they are working on a dramatically different OS to compete with iPhone/iPad so it’ll be interesting to watch their moves. I still see them as losers, though, because Apple and Google are clearly taking away mindshare at minimum.

Anyway, it’s clear that Google is the most arrogant player on the field. They feel they can actually carry out a war with both Apple and Facebook and they feel they can win.

Personally I’m cheering for Google. Why? Because between Apple, Facebook, and Google, Google is the most open, least controlling, and transparent company of the three.

Of course, tomorrow night I’m going to an event at Facebook where they are showing off some new developer-focused stuff for PHP developers, so it’ll be interesting to watch all three of these companies battle over developers and mindshare. It’s fun to be a tech blogger again!

I’m giving away my Kindle. Why?

1. I have the Kindle app on my iPhone and I use that to read books a lot more than I use my Kindle.
2. I will get Apple’s iPad in two months and while that’s a shiny new object I’m sure I’ll use that a lot more to read books than the Kindle, at least until my eyes get strained as some of my commenters were promising would happen.
3. I have a stack of paper books that PR folks have sent me, so for the next two months I am going to try to catch up on those.
4. Even if I find after all of this that I like the Kindle better, I want the larger screen version of the Kindle, so this would let me get that.

So, how am I going to give it away?

Leave a comment here about what you’d do with yours by the end of the day Tuesday (Pacific Time). Most creative answer gets the Kindle. It’s in new condition. I will bias towards those who will use it to help the world, or who can’t afford to keep up on the latest gadget train. Sorry, it won’t come with an Amazon account so you’ll need to buy your own books.