Comments on: Google’s social network: Creepy more than social

By: Metin Bey

Metin Bey — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:22:44 +0000

There is a new example of geoweb applications.
OMOM – Online Members On Map.
Online Members from
Ning.com, Hi5.com, Facebook.com, Bebo.com, Orkut.com and MySpace.com
are on google map.
34 Supported Languages :
English, Turkish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Deutsch, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, French, Greek, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian ve Vietnamese ..

Site Link = http://www.AskOkulu.com

No registration or sign up.
About a month passed 25.000+ members with no advertisement.
Members see the applicaiton in the gallery and click then invite their friends.
İn this rate,( about 500+ new members in a day ) in 1 or 2 month, 50.000 members and then the target will be 100.000 + members.
And go on…

By: AideRSS’s plugin for Google Reader, another third party tempting me back to a Google product » VentureBeat

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:24:18 +0000

[...] it’s been experimenting with some recommendation features — that others and myself have found to be pretty awkward. For example, Reader will take whoever you happen to have chatted with once or twice in Gtalk, [...]

By: VentureBeat » Dear Google Reader: Use Open Social to figure out who my friends are

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:33:21 +0000

[...] “friends” to see your “shared” feed items. At that point, the feature caused this reporter to blow a fuse, because I realized Reader was letting competing bloggers automatically see my shared feed [...]

By: VentureBeat » Dear Google: Just ask me who my friends are, first

VentureBeat » Dear Google: Just ask me who my friends are, first — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:23:19 +0000

By: mcdave.net » links for 2007-12-23

mcdave.net » links for 2007-12-23 — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 06:21:08 +0000

[...] VentureBeat » Google’s social network: Creepy more than social (tags: google identity socialnetwork) [...]

By: Privacy Debate Ongoing - Google’s Turn

Privacy Debate Ongoing - Google’s Turn — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 06:59:27 +0000

[...] what some might refer to as social media or social network-type information). VentureBeat’s story picks up on Google “creepily” predicting who your friends are and surfacing that information in [...]

By: 16th letter » Blog Archive » Google does care about your privacy. Really. There are videos to prove it. »

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:49:13 +0000

[...] Google privacy debate is ongoing, but these videos are timely considering recent objections and concerns about new social networking features that are being added to Google Reader, Gmail and [...]

By: Luc On The Move

Luc On The Move — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:14:51 +0000

No evil my ass.

By: The Equity Kicker » Blog Archive » Google accessing other parts of the social graph

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:58:01 +0000

[...] need any convincing on these points check out the negative reaction to Google’s profiles on Venturebeat – it is full of these sorts of concerns. E.g. if you have frequent Gmail communication with a [...]

By: Peter Bell

Peter Bell — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:08:54 +0000

Eric:

You’ve definitely “hit a nerve” on this one.

A good example from the past of precisely the same sort of social phenomena is the rise of the credit bureaus.

I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this, but at one time people didn’t even know what their credit scores were (assuming such scores existed at all) because the credit scoring business was in its infancy and it didn’t really matter. People got credit, were able to qualify for mortgages, get jobs and insurance, regardless of, or even in the absence of, a good credit score. And, given what’s happened in the U.S. in the last forty years, personally, I’d say that most of us were a lot better off and the quality of life here in the U.S. was a lot higher, all other things being equal.

While the saying is as old as the hills, it’s still powerfully true: “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

As Google continues to grow with its “cool” new features, unless people are diligent in protecting against the abuse that such power represents, Google itself will become a force in further delimiting and impoverishing us as a society. Remember, Google is a business, not a social charity. And, it’s allegiance, ultimately, is to its shareholders and the other companies with which it transacts business.

Good for you in calling our collective attention to a very disturbing and, potentially, malevolent development.

Thanks.

Peter Bell

By: David Gong

David Gong — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:14:21 +0000

Once “finding a new contacts and developing new relationships”, it’s about how to better maintain and manage those existing contacts. If Friends were not all equally important, then information shared should also be discriminative. And users have full control of that. http://www.reachcircle.com is offering such a solution for professionals.

By: David Scott Lewis

David Scott Lewis — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:58:10 +0000

Google is still missing the point. It’s not about a new way to manage existing contacts (and it does indeed seem pretty creepy; I hope it defaults to no sharing), it’s about finding new contacts and developing new relationships. If I just want to share stuff or find what other people are reading, I can use Digg, Furl, whatever. Google has a different on this, but it’s just another way at approaching the same problem.

For finding NEW contacts, developing NEW relationships, sharing with existing contacts at a “higher level” (so to speak), Twine and the other Semantic Web-based solutions are better than what Google is now offering.

By: Luke Razzell

Luke Razzell — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:16:26 +0000

Great analysis, Eric. I would add (in counterpoint) that relationships are very often not symmetrical (e.g. I am a fan of your blog, but you may not read mine), yet the “friend” metaphor that many social networks deploy straightjackets relationships into symmetricality.

At Blog Friends (where I found and now favourited this post), we keep your point about asking for explicit preferences in mind always; as well as avoiding assumptions about “friendship” (we talk about Fans and Favourites).

By: Google Profiles: Weak at Facebook Applications Reviews, Facebook Widgets, Facebook News

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 03:43:16 +0000

[...] This might just top the privacy concerns that facebook Beacon’s firestorm created. Anyone at Moveon.org paying attention to the “Do No Evil” Google? For a very detailed analysis of how Google Profiles works on Google; and the potential implications, check out the great post at VentureBeat.com [...]

By: Randy

Randy — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:20:01 +0000

Eric: Totally agree, and thanks for preaching same… even in my 5th decade, i’m not so old fashioned; however, your friends should be just that — yours.